AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
The connection between local Chinese take-aways, the fabled Silk Road which brought produce from the East to Europe for centuries and the challenges facing the State to provide for a population which has ballooned by more than 10% in the last seven years may not be obvious. But bear with me.
The delicious fare at one of the Xi’an restaurants, named for historic Xi’an city in China’s Shaanxi province, set me thinking. The Chinese have a way of getting things done: the food at Xi’an was fresh, fast and cost a quarter of the bill for a recent treat in a traditional Dublin restaurant.
The cost of major projects and the time taken to complete them have featured in a lot of headlines recently. There is the Metro link from Dublin airport to the city promised since 2005 which is still 12 years away and is likely to cost €10 billion and how about the ever-escalating cost of the Children’s Hospital, climbing to more than €2.2 billion more than double the estimated cost of 10 years ago.
And don’t even mention the housing crisis and infrastructure inadequate to cope with the surge in population. As a country we are brilliant at lots of things but we seem to have lost the art of providing much-needed infrastructure efficiently and affordably.
That is something which the Chinese have been doing for other countries on a huge scale since President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. Also known as the New Silk Road, the ambitious plan set out to solve the age-old challenge of getting trade and connections from A to B. The aim is to create an economic corridor which will connect countries from China across central Asia stretching to eastern and southern Europe with links all the way to Africa and Latin America.
Deploying China’s ‘Go Out’ approach, it uses China’s expertise in building infrastructure for other countries with loans and investment amounting to a trillion dollars so far. A bit confusingly ‘Road’ refers to a maritime road and ‘Belt‘ to opening up rail, road and internet connections which will be particularly valuable to land-locked Central Asian countries.
In the past the Silk Road involved arduous overland journeys, but now 90% of trade is carried by sea, which is fine if you happen to be in countries conveniently linked to ports but not great in those with names ending in ‘stan’ like Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan.
The initiative, involving 140 countries with 75% of the world’s population and half of its GDP, is designed to boost trade and cut costs. It has met with varying degrees of success. Establishing China’s role in global development, it has also met with criticism by the West as a form debt-trap diplomacy, resulting in poor countries ending up with unaffordable levels of debt with China.
Whatever the objections, the Chinese now have enormous experience and expertise in delivering infrastructure. For instance the Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) launched in 2015 linking Gwadar on the Arabian sea with Kashgar in Western China involved a $60 billion investment in railways, roads, airports and energy infrastructure. Another BRI project involved a high-speed rail link in Indonesia which cut the travel time between Jakarta and Bandung from three and a half hours to 45 minutes.
Now European countries are starting to wake up to the benefits of a Chinese takeaway to solve their infrastructure challenges. Serbia has significant Chinese investment in infrastructure.“
China’s wallet has been welcomed particularly by non-EU members, because it can dispense cash faster and with fewer restrictions,” writes Jonathan Hillman in his book ‘The Emperor’s New Road’. For China gaining a foothold in the EU is the ultimate prize which is beginning to materialise.
Chinese investment in EU member Hungary is expected to reach €30 billion this year for projects involving EV charging stations throughout the country, a high- speed rail link to Budapest airport and a railway line around the city. They sound just the kind of projects we need here.
Traditionally we are orientated towards Europe and America. Maybe it’s time to look East and to consider Chinese take-aways – which, like food take-aways, are often faster and better value – as a solution to our infrastructure problems.
