Interview with Dr Angela Tritto

Dr Angela Tritto is an honorary fellow at UCL’s China Centre in the Department of European and International Social and Political Studies.  Dr Tritto has worked for several universities and institutions across the globe, with her research focussing on China’s Belt and Road Initiative and development projects, and their social, political and environmental implications.

In this article, we discuss Dr Tritto’s work on China’s economic and development projects in Asia, and their implications for regional and global politics. Dr Tritto’s focus on case study analyses, often straddling multiple disciplines and lines of inquiry gives her a unique perspective on these political dynamics, with an in-depth understanding of their local dynamics. The outcomes of her research often emphasise local agency over Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects and the projects’ diverse impacts, whilst also placing them in their potential strategic and global political contexts.

Much of your research focusses on the localisation of the BRI in Southeast Asia, do you see the process of localisation as driven more by the agency of the recipient states in deciding the structure of the BRI, or the ability of Chinese bureaucrats to adapt their own model to different environments?

I see localisation as being driven by both sides, but if I had to pick one based on my research as well as my colleagues’ research who have worked extensively on cases like Sri Lanka and Pakistan, I would pick the side of host countries, especially for BRI flagship projects.

I believe that in our research it has never occurred that when we have interviewed government officials, they told us that the ideas of the BRI projects came from China. They all had a list of projects ready and sometimes these were projects that these countries were trying to propose to other foreign investors but somehow, they were never realised, and so they ended up on the negotiation table with China. Eventually, after much empirical research on countries in South and Southeast Asia, our group of researchers on the BRI defined it as having a very concessional nature. Possibly the Chinese government could and should have imposed some requirements on these projects to make them more sustainable or economically viable, but it didn’t, and I see this as one of the main reasons why some of these projects have not had the expected results. But also, when some projects were characterised by a strong alignment of objectives between the recipient and China these were realised faster.

Although you have given a very good answer for this already in your article for The Diplomat, Does China wield more or less coercive power through the BRI than generally perceived by Western policymakers and commentators?

I think at the beginning of the BRI, the West depicted China as wielding more coercive power than it actually had. But I think that as China, over the last ten years of the BRI, grew to be the largest investor in many countries, it gained more power to coerce countries. So, it is up to countries to strike a good balance between different foreign investors, especially in this geopolitical climate. I believe the thing on which the Chinese government has become much more assertive and coercive is the One China policy that has now openly become the basis for entertaining economic relations with China.

Following this, would there currently be any reason why a country in the global south wouldn’t join the BRI?

Well, one reason for sure would be if they were determined to maintain their official recognition of Taiwan, but this has become very rare. Yet many countries are welcoming and actively trying to attract Taiwanese investments, especially in high-tech industries like semiconductors. Student exchanges are also frequent. Quite a number of students in Southeast Asia choose Taiwan as their preferred destination to obtain graduate degrees. Also, some countries are more openly aligned with the US and although this doesn’t preclude them from joining the BRI, they may leave the BRI, refrain from joining it, or even discontinuing investments with Chinese companies just to show their political support towards the US.

Do you think China’s BRI projects can be seen as more strategic or profit-making in nature? For example, in sectors such as heavy metal mining, green technologies and strategic infrastructure.

I believe they can be seen as more strategic, and the main reason is because the government officials who negotiated the BRI projects went more strategically about it. In Southeast Asia especially, there is a strong tradition of developmental states using industrial policy and various forms of state capitalism, so this resulted in a catalysing effect for the BRI in this region, increasing enthusiasm.

What trajectory do you see the BRI taking over the next five years? Particularly if relations with the US become more confrontational, such as in the event of a Trump presidency.

I believe China is now in a sort of domestic fix phase of their development strategy, and so in my view the BRI in the form of project investment and economic facilitation will continue but it will become more selective. There is unlikely to be more big infrastructural projects. However, Chinese companies are now ‘going out’ not only because of the BRI and but also because of factors related to de-risking. For example, if they have a strong reliance on certain markets that may be subject to tariffs, they may try to diversify their manufacturing bases by developing operations overseas.

Finally, what do you see as the primary motivations behind the Belt and Road initiative? To open new markets for the Chinese economy, or to displace US power?

In the decade before the launch of the BRI, China acquired large foreign currency deposits and domestically, certain sectors dominated by Chinese state-owned enterprises or state-linked companies were experiencing overcapacity. So I believe the main motivation was for the country to utilize these financial resources to propel the Chinese economy further overseas, essentially as a continuation of the ‘Going out’ policy of the previous years, but under a much grander strategy that would extend China’s soft power and sphere of influence.