The Maritime Silk Road Initiative: Connecting Africa
There are many treatments of the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI), but there is a dearth of studies probing exactly how much connectivity is occurring and what are the implications of these connections for the volume and distribution of economic flows
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Introduction The official People’s Republic of China (hereinafter PRC/China) document about the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) entitled “Vision and Actions on Jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road” emphasizes that China and Africa were integrated through the ancient Maritime Silk Road (MSR) and mentions some form of connectivity about 24 times in the text.1 Connectivity here is not limited to hard infrastructure, but also encompasses flows like trade, soft infrastructure such as customs coordination, cooperation in inspections, and the removal of barriers to trade and investment, and financial cooperation such as currency swaps, the issuance of renminbi-denominated bonds, and financial regulation.2 It was in 2013 that Beijing released details about the routes and corridors intended to kick start the revival of the ancient Silk Road. Unlike the
The author would like to express his appreciation to the editor for his invaluable guidance and editorial assistance. He also would like to thank Xu Jing for assistance conforming this chapter to publisher style requirements. C. Mboya (B) Fudan University, Shanghai, China © The Author(s) 2021 J.-M. F. Blanchard (ed.), China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative, Africa, and the Middle East, Palgrave Studies in Asia-Pacific Political Economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4013-8_2
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ancient Silk Road that marginally contacted Africa at the East coast, the contemporary MSRI makes forays into several African countries along the Indian Ocean as it seeks to boost sea trade from Southeast Asia through Africa to Europe.3 While the general configuration of the MSRI’s route is clear, the list of participant countries remains unclear as fears of exclusion by and the suspicions of other countries led Chinese officials to declare that its scheme is open to all countries interested in doing business with China. In Africa, the following countries are believed to be part of the MSRI based on ongoing and planned MSRI projects as well as official declarations from Chinese leaders (see Table 1). As the MSRI takes shape in Africa, increased connectivity continues to materialize with huge investments in infrastructure projects such as railways, seaports, airports, pipelines, highways, logistics hubs, export processing zones, and information and communication technology (ICT) underway. To date, a raging debate has ensued among scholars and observers interested in various aspects of the MSRI with most of the debate focused on economic, political and geostrategic aspects. Some argue that the MSRI has the potential to establish a new world order and define a new financial and geostrategic architecture. Others, emphasizing the geo-political aspects, have argued that it is a political economic project having potentially multi-level and multi-sectoral territorial consequences.4 While such works are useful, there has been insufficient investigation of concrete projects, the regional and global conne
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