Is There a Chinese “Developmental peace”? Evidence from the Belt and Road Initiative’s Impact on Conflict States

ABSTRACT

In the ten years since its inception, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted significant attention for its transformative impact on geopolitics, international developmental aid and the environment of member countries. A comparatively understudied aspect is the clustering of BRI investments in conflict-affected states. Here, the BRI’s impact is potentially even greater, but highly ambiguous: on the one hand, it is providing much-needed development financing to countries with unattractive risk profiles, thus potentially contributing to their stabilization. On the other, this influx of capital risks exacerbating antagonisms over resource distribution and project control, creating additional grievances resulting from a lack of oversight, and reigniting conflicts along existing political fault lines. This article examines the BRI’s transformative impact on conflict-affected states, by focusing on effects on local conflict dynamics, the legitimacy of governing institutions and outright political violence. It establishes general patterns of BRI investments and their conflict exposure, and investigates these dynamics in more detail through case studies on Pakistan and Myanmar. Finally, it analyzes which BRI-specific practices have shaped its conflict impact, and how these could be improved.

Introduction

Ten years after the official launch of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, it has established a foothold in over a hundred participant countries, and is clearly here to stay. While ostensibly a development project, the political implications of the BRI have been a prominent object of scholarship throughout its existence. Initially, much of this attention focused on Chinese strategic interests behind the BRI, i.e. a desire to reclaim Chinese centrality in geoeconomics and, eventually, geopolitics.¹ Announced early into Xi Jinping’s tenure, the BRI was quickly perceived as a Chinese ‘grand strategy’ for the realization of his ambitious, status-seeking foreign policy.² Influential international analyses have focused on its potential usage as a geopolitical tool to extend Chinese influence over member countries.³ This literature has often stressed the potential usage of economic ties to create political dependencies, including a suspicion that economically non-viable projects serve ulterior political motives.⁴

More recent scholarship has critiqued this view by arguing that it overstates the coherence and strategic orientation of the BRI, while underestimating the agency of recipient countries in shaping BRI implementations,⁵ especially that of local elites with the power to select projects in line with their interests.⁶ This ‘local turn’ in BRI research has also shifted the focus to domestic political effects within member countries—for example, on local governance institutions, balances of power, or the legitimacy of implementing institutions. Since these require attention to local contexts, they have so far been covered mainly in single-case studies on high-profile cases like Pakistan.⁷

Amidst all this attention, an underexplored aspect of the BRI is its outsized presence in fragile and conflict-affected states. The BRI’s niche is to serve countries mostly in the Global South that have been unable to meet their infrastructure needs from other international funders, resulting in an overexposure to high-risk environments.⁸ Chinese officials have advertised this as a feature of the BRI: in 2017, Xi Jinping called it a ‘road for peace’, capable of uniting feuding groups and nations under the banner of win-win cooperation.⁹ Likewise, the most recent government white paper on the BRI describes it as a ‘path to peace’ and devotes an entire section to its ‘injecting positive energy into world peace and development’.¹⁰ Chinese academics have gone further in advancing the notion of a ‘developmental peace’,¹¹ arguing that the Chinese model of rapid, infrastructure-led development can be used to stabilize conflict-prone environments. On the ground, however, many of the resulting projects have been mired in controversies and political conflicts,¹² putting an additional strain on local institutions that already suffer from low levels of legitimacy and public trust.

This article is intended to capture the BRI’s impact on conflict states, by comparing two especially relevant cases–Pakistan and Myanmar–that have absorbed significant BRI investments while experiencing intense political instability and violence. This makes them best suited to assess the BRI’s effects on local conflict dynamics, and which practices these are rooted in. It is based on multiple rounds of interviews with academic experts, civil society representatives, activists, and public officials in both countries, conducted between late 2020 and early 2023, through a mixture of personal and video interviews. The article is structured as follows: it first provides a brief review of the political dimension of infrastructure in conflict settings, before discussing general patterns of the BRI’s presence in fragile states, and the reasons for its abovementioned exposure to conflict risks. Subsequently, the BRI’s presence and effects in Pakistan and Myanmar are introduced separately, focusing on controversies generated by local projects, their handling, and observable impacts on political stability and outright violence. Finally, the conclusion compares the BRI’s effects across both cases, discusses their causes and (briefly) potential mitigation measures.

Infrastructural Politics in Conflict Settings

Infrastructure, particularly in the form of large-scale projects, is by its design transformative for natural and social environments. Accordingly, much attention has been spent on how to make infrastructure environmentally and socially sustainable, both in the academic literature and practical guidelines.¹³ Compared to this, the political implications of infrastructure are still a relative lacuna; in fact, the most prominent studies on this field are drawn from anthropological observations of how the arrival of infrastructure leads to a manifestation of state power in everyday lives,¹⁴ e.g. in the case of municipal water networks or roads linking previously disconnected communities.¹⁵ Politicized, infrastructure-centric development agendas are an especially prominent feature in postcolonial states, centered on priorities like the replacement of extractive colonial-era infrastructure or the creation of unified (state) spaces in multiethnic polities.¹⁶

This is an interesting research gap, as the handling of large-scale infrastructure projects is inextricably linked with governance issues. Outcomes in the field are determined by the host government’s willingness and capacity to assess factors like environmental and social impacts, economic viability, and costs-benefit-distribution; to mandate adequate safeguards and compensation for the disaffected; and to ensure an efficient, transparent and non-corrupt implementation. At the same time, infrastructural outcomes also have a direct impact on governance: successful implementation of projects can raise governmental capacities and legitimacy, while mishandled ones can weaken them. Infrastructure can be a multiplicator for economic growth, provide immediate employment opportunities, and reduce economic inequality through access to utilities.¹⁷ For governments that base their legitimacy primarily on successes in economic development—as China itself—such projects are essential for delivering on their promises. Moreover, infrastructure can make a direct contribution to state capacity building, by enabling the provision of essential services, or extending government control over spaces that were difficult to access.¹⁸ Aside from its material effects, infrastructure is also often imbued with a high symbolic and political significance that can strengthen faith in the regime undertaking its construction.¹⁹ Conversely, governmental mishandling of infrastructure investments can lead to serious losses of legitimacy and, ultimately, stability. Infrastructure is intrinsically susceptible to corruption, as it involves the transfer of large amounts of public funds to a limited number of contractors. Even where projects are designed for broader public welfare, costs and benefits may be very unevenly distributed across the country, e.g. when it comes to the environmental footprint of energy generation.²⁰

Owing to its design, the BRI is especially affected by many of these issues. It specializes in transformative megaprojects that promise rapid developmental breakthroughs, but come with heavy debt burdens, land usage, environmental impact and related political controversies.²¹ Its environmental and social governance has been lacking, primarily due to a lack of oversight capacities within China and the default mode of deferring to local laws in member states.²² Its amenability to local elite interests has opened it up to ‘elite capture’ and other forms of corruption.²³ Finally, its stakeholder and civil society outreach components are underdeveloped, often resulting in resentment and sometimes organized resistance by affected local communities.²⁴

Conflicts resulting from infrastructural politics can in principle be resolved by ensuring the representation of all affected parties in decision-making institutions, through robust governance that protects their rights, and compensation where they have been disadvantaged. However, this problem becomes much more acute in states where conflicts between in- and out-of-power groups have escalated to organized violence, and where local governing institutions lack the necessary will, trust or capacities to moderate them. In these cases, infrastructure projects can themselves become high-profile targets of political violence, for several reasons: they have a military value in extending control over surrounding territories, they provide material sustenance to their stakeholders, and they symbolize the transformative agency of their designers. Where infrastructure is seen as a tool for conflict parties–most likely central governments–to exercise power, it is likely to trigger violent contestation from their opponents.²⁵ And even where projects are not consciously targeted, they frequently draw local protests, which may also turn violent if mishandled. As will be shown below, both the erosion of legitimacy and the direct triggering of political violence are urgent issues in the universe of fragile and conflict-affected states that constitute the BRI’s niche, and have led to its entanglement in local conflict dynamics.

The BRI’s Conflict Exposure and Impact

From its beginning in 2013, the BRI’s main promise was that it would close an ‘infrastructure gap’ in the Global South; a demand for infrastructure financing estimated in the trillions of USD that traditional development donors and funders had so far failed to meet. Influential Chinese experts who provided intellectual input on the nascent BRI had raised this diagnosis several years prior already, warning that the infrastructure gap was a bottleneck for economic growth in areas of rising interest to China itself, from Southeast Asia to Africa.²⁶ There are many reasons why the infrastructure gap was such a prominent feature across the areas now targeted by the BRI, but the arguably biggest was (and is) the serious risk posed by their political instability. Political risks include government turnovers that result in contract renegotiations, local resistance and protests against construction, the possibility of expropriation, and–at the extreme end–violent conflict and wartime destruction.²⁷ Infrastructure is particularly sensitive to such risks, as it is physically locked in place, cannot be easily divested, and has very long amortization periods. Where funders lack faith in the long-term stability of recipient countries, they will shy away from such investments altogether or only make them available at very high interest rates that in turn render projects non-viable. Meanwhile, developmental aid in the form of grants or interest-free loans is not available in sufficient volume to close the gap, or–at least when coming from OECD DAC members–usually comes with conditions for political or economic reforms that recipients find onerous.²⁸

As with earlier Chinese developmental financing, the BRI effectively targets this niche by making capital and technical expertise available at attractive conditions: it relies mainly on concessional loans provided by state-owned Chinese policy banks at interest rates below those charged by purely commercial creditors²⁹; political imperatives to foster good relations with host governments make it highly receptive to local elite interests and their infrastructural priorities³⁰; it does not come with (overt) economic or political conditionality, owing to China’s traditional stance of noninterference in the domestic politics of other states³¹; and is much less constrained by risk assessment regimes, especially where political risks are concerned.³² For governments in fragile and conflict-affected states, the onset of the BRI has opened up a new source of financing, and often the only one they could tap to fund long-held infrastructure development plans.

While China’s willingness to tolerate high political risks in its partners is a key factor in the rapid global advance of the BRI, it has also resulted in a very high exposure of Chinese capital—and citizens—to such risks. Figure 1 plots a simple bivariate relationship between the volume of Chinese infrastructure investments in the set of countries that have joined the BRI, and their fragility.³³ As can be seen, the estimated overall relationship in this sample is positive, meaning BRI investments are clustered in countries that experience high degrees of fragility, political instability and conflict-proneness. Indeed, its top investment destination is Pakistan, where over 30 billion USD have already been spent (and over 60 billion committed) on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, despite being one of the most at-risk countries in this sample.

Figure 1. Chinese infrastructure construction investments in BRI member countries by state fragility.

From a risk management point of view, this distribution is highly counterintuitive—one would expect a concentration in safer environments to be preferable. It can however be explained through BRI-specific practices and challenges. First, political stability and conflict risks were not awarded much attention at least in the early stage of the BRI, when significant funding commitments were locked in. When covering ‘political risks’ to the BRI, Chinese authors writing about this issue mainly focused on external pressure by the US and its allies to reject infrastructural cooperation with China.³⁴ Where domestic political instability was considered in this literature, it mainly extended to the dangers of government turnovers and subsequent cancellation or renegotiation of contracts; meanwhile, civil strife and political violence ranked much further down the list of risks. A brief review of assessment frameworks used by the two top-level Chinese regulators tasked with screening outbound investments—the National Development and Reform Commission³⁵ and the Ministry of Commerce³⁶ – reveals similarly little emphasis on conflict risks: while investments in ‘sensitive’ areas are subject to NDRC approval and MOFCOM has a category for assessing security risks, these concerns can be overridden by other considerations, and any BRI projects are to be automatically assessed in a ‘favorable light’.³⁷

Second, there is an element of path dependency, as the BRI follows the pattern of earlier Chinese overseas investments. As an industrial latecomer with a growing appetite for resource imports, China often had to obtain the latter in environments that had been rejected as unattractive by its established international competitors. Moreover, China’s periphery–a region which any transport link centered on the latter will have to traverse–is also riddled with stability risks. Western suspicions that the BRI is a geopolitical ploy also excluded many of the most stable countries from the ranks of BRI members, leaving the resulting universe of partners skewed towards higher-risk environments. Below the national-level distribution of BRI investments, a similar exposure to high-risk areas can also be observed. Both of the cases discussed below are home to country-spanning, China-facing corridor projects, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC). In both cases, the development of these corridors spans peripheral areas that have been marginalized in domestic politics, born the brunt of military suppression, and have had little input in the design of local BRI projects. As will be explored further below, this is a key reason for the local backlash against the BRI, and has further exacerbated existing tensions.

Crucially, the BRI’s presence in conflict states is not just an accident born out of insufficient risk management, but has been marketed as one of its features. Chinese leaders and diplomats have advertised the BRI as a ‘road for peace’ that can make a positive contribution to political stabilization by providing developmental impulses.³⁸ Chinese theorists writing on this issue have gone a step further and proposed a model of a so-called ‘developmental peace’ that argues political stabilization can be best achieved by focusing on the provision of economic incentives for peace, instead of the greater inclusiveness of political institutions favored by adherents of the liberal peacebuilding paradigm.³⁹ While other international funders and donors also assume a linkage between infrastructure provision, sustainable development, and political stability, this is usually couched in political frameworks that stress factors like transparency, stakeholder outreach, and political consensus-building.⁴⁰ Unique to the Chinese approach, however, are three core tenets: (1) the assumption that conflicts are ultimately rooted in under- or uneven development, (2) the priority of strengthening the developmental capabilities of local governments over transforming their political inclusiveness, and (3) the resulting belief that the successful conclusion of developmental efforts can create peace even in the absence of political reforms. In this view, large-scale infrastructure projects can set off a virtuous circle by stimulating economic growth, giving former conflict parties shared incentives to maintain peace, and thus contributing to a political stabilization without targeting this level directly.⁴¹

In order to examine if this assumption holds up in reality, it is instructive to look at states that can serve as test cases. This article will subsequently focus on Pakistan and Myanmar, picked for the following reasons: first, they have already experienced severe fragility, but were given a fresh developmental impulse in the arrival of the BRI and ambitious country-spanning corridor projects. Second, their conflicts are comparable in that they can be traced to the same two political fault lines: center-periphery tensions and civil–military relations. In the former, the dominant Punjabi and Bamar ethnic groups have enjoyed privileged control over nation-state institutions, but found it hard to extend their authority over vast peripheral areas populated by minorities.⁴² In both cases, military establishments wield extraordinary political authority, claimed on the basis of their supposed guardianship of national unity. Both militaries have exercised direct rule for much of their countries’ history (1958–1971, 1977–1988 and 1999–2008 in Pakistan’s case, and 1962–2011 and 2021-present in Myanmar’s), making formal constitutional arrangements tenuous and subject to military overrule. Third, both cases exhibit the kind of under- and uneven development that infrastructure is supposed to alleviate: Pakistan has the second-lowest Human Development Index (HDI) in South Asia after Afghanistan, while Myanmar has the lowest in Southeast Asia.⁴³ As will be detailed below, internal developmental differences are also pronounced in both, with most minority areas lagging behind the national average. Fourth, existing partnerships with local organizations allowed for interviewing respondents on the ground, which is crucial for examining the localized effects of BRI-induced development.

The remainder of this article will cover both of these cases in detail, introducing relevant conflict lines prior to the onset of the BRI, the developmental priorities which it pursued, and political resistance and sometimes outright violence against the resulting projects. Each case study concludes with a brief assessment of the BRI’s impact on local conflict structures and conditions. This analysis is primarily based on multiple rounds of interviews with academic experts, civil society representatives, activists, and public officials in Pakistan and Myanmar, conducted between late 2020 and mid-2023 through a mixture of personal and video interviews.

The BRI in Pakistan

Pakistan is home to the BRI’s ‘flagship’, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and the country that has absorbed the most Chinese infrastructure investments since its onset. This capital transfer has occurred despite a long history of political instability and violent internal conflicts, some of which have directly impacted Chinese projects. Assembled from the Muslim-majority parts of British India, Pakistan is an ethnically heterogeneous state. The largest ethnic group is formed by Punjabis, who comprise about 45% of Pakistan’s citizens, but which have historically dominated Pakistan’s politics, bureaucracy and especially the military.⁴⁴ The remainder of the population is dispersed between several minorities ranging from 3% to 18% that occupy the peripheral provinces of Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan. The ongoing underdevelopment and political marginalization of these areas compared to Punjab has given rise to significant center-periphery tensions, repeatedly resulting in organized violence. In Balochistan, a conflict between local ethnic separatists and the Pakistani military broke out in 2005, triggered by controversies over local development projects that can be seen as CPEC precursors.⁴⁵ In addition to domestic instability, Pakistan is locked in a rivalry with its much larger neighbor India, which has led to three full-scale wars and numerous smaller clashes since partition. This condition has also contributed to an outsized military influence in Pakistani domestic politics, including several periods of outright junta rule. The military is a major stakeholder in CPEC, providing a dedicated security force, intermittent project oversight, and reportedly direct economic involvement through some of its subsidiaries.⁴⁶

Given these conditions, Pakistan has found it extraordinarily difficult to attract foreign investments in its infrastructure and industry. Upon its announcement in 2013, CPEC was accordingly advertised as a ‘game changer’ by Pakistan’s then-government: by investing billions in connectivity, energy and industrial development projects, it would supercharge economic growth, and even contribute to broader nation-building goals.⁴⁷ In these priority areas, CPEC has indeed delivered developmental progress at ‘China speed’. Nine new power plants with a combined capacity of over 5,000 MW were constructed between 2015 and 2020,⁴⁸ solving–at least initially–a nationwide energy shortfall and the problem of frequent ‘load-shedding’. An upgrading of Pakistan’s north–south highways is underway, linking major cities and new special economic zones (SEZs) to each other and the Chinese border. Each province has been assigned its own SEZ, where priority infrastructure development and tax breaks are supposed to lure Chinese light industry enterprises. This more long-term goal has however so far not been realized, as Pakistan’s textile-and agriculture-oriented economy puts it in direct competition with neighboring Xinjiang, instead of forming a complementary cross-border area.⁴⁹ In the era of CPEC, bilateral trade has indeed expanded: from 2015 to 2023, total trade volume grew by 24% from 11.7 to 14.6 billion USD, Pakistani exports to China by 59%, and imports by 19%.⁵⁰ However, because Pakistan’s exports are predominantly low-value primary goods, Pakistan’s massive trade deficit with China has grown further to almost ten billion USD.

Aside from its mixed economic record, CPEC’s political effects are even less encouraging. Far from healing an internally divided nation, it has led to renewed tugs-of-war across both the center-periphery and civil-military divides. The former mainly concerned the distribution of projects among provinces: In 2015, it emerged that Pakistan’s comparatively highly developed Punjab and Sindh provinces would claim the lion’s share of new investments across connectivity, energy and industrial parks, triggering acute concerns in western regions that they would be left even further behind.⁵¹ Since CPEC is designed as a corridor linking up with China, the question of how to route it became highly controversial, pitting proponents of a ‘western’ route through Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa against those of an ‘eastern’ route mainly through Punjab.⁵² This question was seemingly resolved with a compromise featuring three north–south arteries in 2015, but western regions saw little subsequent progress on the roads they had been promised due to a lack of interest on the Chinese side.⁵³ By comparison, Punjab enjoyed privileged access to CPEC planning and speedier progress on greenlit projects.⁵⁴ Controversies also abounded wherever CPEC actually materialized in the periphery: the Balochistan provincial government complained that the most significant local CPEC site, the port of Gwadar, was a federal project that it had no stake in planning and enjoyed only a minimal share of its revenues.⁵⁵ Near the port, a major protest movement has sprung up, focusing on complaints over the security regime’s impact on movement of locals, threats to livelihoods from overfishing, restrictions on cross-border trade with Iran, a lack of local water and energy provision, and a general feeling of displacement by foreigners.⁵⁶ At the provincial level, the governments of Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkwa have protested over the lack of progress on agreed-upon connectivity and SEZ projects, as well as inaccessibility of newly-generated energy due to outdated local grids.⁵⁷ These problems have also inhibited the promised industrial development, especially in Balochistan’s Bostan SEZ, which has bolstered local perceptions that its share of CPEC is primarily about resource extraction.⁵⁸

All of this speaks to a lack of local stakeholdership and engagement of subnational actors, which is characteristic for the BRI in general. However, across more than twenty interviews on these issues, not a single respondent blamed China for these outcomes—instead, they were universally ascribed to failures in Pakistan’s own political and bureaucratic institutions. When it comes specifically to infrastructure provision, these authorities have traditionally enjoyed low levels of public trust, owing to perceptions of domination by Punjabis, widespread corruption, overreach, and the often-controversial nature of selected projects. For example, both the Tarbela dam constructed on the Indus river in the 1970s and the proposed Kalabagh dam were backed by national technocratic elites, but faced stiff resistance from downstream communities who perceived them as threats to their water rights and political autonomy.⁵⁹ CPEC can be seen as a continuation of the center-periphery tensions at the heart of Pakistani infrastructural politics, and reignited familiar conflicts. Neither the constitutionally mandated federalism and a specially convened all-party conference were ultimately able to resolve the distribution conflict over CPEC projects, resulting in greater peripheral resentment of the central government and contributing to existing tensions with it.⁶⁰ All of this has played out against the backdrop of an intensifying political and economic crisis: in 2022, premier Imran Khan was ousted by an opposition coalition, for which he subsequently blamed an army conspiracy. Khan’s arrest the following year has led to clashes between his supporters and security forces.⁶¹ Meanwhile, the steep decline in the Pakistani rupee has made it increasingly difficult to serve the country’s external debt, leaving Beijing as its most important economic lifeline.⁶² Since most new CPEC plants run on imported coal, they could no longer be viably run in the summer of 2022, triggering renewed power cuts just as a heatwave ravished the country.⁶³

In civil–military relations, successive Pakistani governments have taken different approaches to CPEC governance. As a massive development project endowed with rich business opportunities and a strategic purpose, the military had pushed for a stake in CPEC from the beginning.⁶⁴ The PML-N government of Nawaz Sharif that originally launched the project still insisted on civilian-technocratic control, exercised by the Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform. Its successor, the PTI government led by Imran Khan from 2018–2022, turned out be both less enthusiastic about CPEC and more willing to entertain military influence. It set up a new ‘CPEC Authority’ (CPECA) under general Asim Bajwa by executive decree, triggering a bureaucratic turf war, constitutional complaints and allegations of corruption.⁶⁵ Since Khan had been a noted CPEC critic while in opposition, initially put the brakes on implementation, and had a tense relationship with the Chinese side, the military could also draw additional political power from its role as a trusted intermediate.⁶⁶ Khan’s ouster by an opposition coalition in 2022 led to the disbanding of CPECA and re-consolidation of governance under the planning ministry, now the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives (Rana 2022). Despite these changes in oversight, however, military participation in the project remains enshrined by the need to secure CPEC sites in very conflict-prone environments. CPEC’s protection is the task of a Special Security Division (SSD) of 15,000 troops set up specifically for the purpose. Chinese staff working on CPEC projects live and move about under constant military escort, and high-profile sites like Gwadar have been ringed by multiple tiers of military checkpoints, imposing a very tight and intrusive security regime on locals (more on this below).

Institutional Legitimacy

On the ground, local communities have raised numerous concerns about the implementation of CPEC, but often been frustrated in making their voices heard. One charge raised across many interviews for this study concerns land grabbing, where a Land Acquisition Act dating from the colonial era grants the government sweeping authority to expropriate landholders for public purposes, ostensibly at market rates but in practice often well below. Where this met with local resistance, pressure from state and even military authorities was brought against hold-outs.⁶⁷ Similar problems are evident from CPEC’s environmental impact. In order to quickly ramp up electricity production, CPEC relied mainly on coal plants, which account for 80% of the newly-installed capacity.⁶⁸ This is not just a climate issue, but has adversely affected local farmers and herders: for example, the Thar complex, where coal is both mined and fired, has triggered protests over toxic wastewater discharges into adjacent agricultural lands.⁶⁹ Here too, formal complaint mechanisms have neither yielded changes in plant operations nor compensation for locals, while protests were suppressed on charges of sedition.⁷⁰

These issues have marred other large-scale infrastructure problems in Pakistan, but the reason CPEC has triggered so much disappoint- and resentment is the hype with which it had been originally announced, as a supposed ‘game changer’ for all of Pakistan regardless of ethnicity or class. Measured against this ambition, the country’s peripheral, underdeveloped regions of Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa saw its reality as a massive disappointment, and a perpetuation of Punjabi privilege. Provincial authorities complained about being unable to directly pitch projects to central decisionmakers or Chinese investors, being initially excluded from the Pakistani-Chinese CPEC coordination committee, and about a lack of funding for agreed-upon projects.⁷¹ Progress elsewhere, like on the new power plants, did not deliver any benefits to these areas, as they lacked grids to deliver electricity.⁷² Notably, most of these grievances remained after the opposition PTI won an election victory in 2018, despite its power base in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and previous criticism of CPEC: the new government eventually persisted with a centralized approach to implementation, while allowing for greater military influence through a new ‘CPEC Authority’.⁷³ As a result, Pakistan’s peripheral regions have come to perceive CPEC as a betrayal of federalist principles, a broken promise to alleviate internal developmental differences, and a reason to distrust the central government.⁷⁴ In the words of one respondent, the credibility of Pakistan’s governmental institutions had reached ‘its lowest point’ in the age of CPEC.⁷⁵

Another factor that has contributed to the latter point, and one that is endemic to the BRI, is its lack of transparency. Project details and loan conditions are agreed bilaterally between central governments, and the results especially of the latter are rarely made public. In Pakistan, this tight information control has given rise to suspicions that the central government had taken on an unsustainable amount of debt, making a default more likely and complicating negotiations with other lenders.⁷⁶

Political Violence

While most of the resistance against CPEC has come in the form of protests and complaints, its most eye-catching aspect are frequent direct attacks on project sites and staff, conducted mainly by insurgents from the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)–an ethnic separatist organization—and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an Islamist movement. From CPEC’s launch in 2015, these groups have undertaken twelve attacks against Chinese projects in the country that have resulted in 76 deaths—the majority of which (58) have been Pakistani.⁷⁷ This figure does not include attacks targeting Chinese citizens undertaken by the same groups, but without a direct connection to CPEC projects, like the highly publicized killing of three Chinese teachers at the Karachi Confucius Institute in 2022. This clearly makes Pakistan a very dangerous territory for the BRI, and speaks to the level of resistance it is facing from groups opposed to its developmental approach and the Pakistani state. The frequency and severity of attacks has also led to Chinese criticism of local security arrangements and diplomatic pressure to improve them, a significant step for a country still championing ‘noninterference’.⁷⁸

When gauging the conflict impact of CPEC, however, these numbers need to be read in context of the overall security situation in Pakistan, which is marked by extremely high levels of violence: between 2015 and 2020, terror attacks alone claimed an estimated 5,233 fatalities⁷⁹; while all cases of political violence resulted in an estimated 11,617 deaths.⁸⁰ The years prior to CPEC’s onset had seen even more bloodshed from terrorism and military counterinsurgency operations, with an estimated 28,561 fatalities from 2010 to 2014.⁸¹ Against this backdrop, CPEC-related attacks did not meaningfully increase levels of violence, but attract outsized attention due to the targets’ symbolic significance and international implications for the BRI and China-Pakistan cooperation. Moreover, both of the insurgent groups that are responsible for the majority of attacks are not primarily focused on Chinese targets, but engaged in long-running campaigns against the Pakistani state and its security services that predate the arrival of the BRI. In Balochistan, the port of Gwadar has become a target for separatists because they see it as a neo-colonial project designed to exploit the province’s natural wealth for the benefit of outsiders (which includes Punjabi-dominated federal authorities as much as China).⁸² Similarly, the Islamist TTP has been waging its own war against the Pakistani state since 2007, and has only recently begun to attack Chinese targets over Beijing’s support for the former.⁸³

While CPEC’s direct observable impact on levels of violence in Pakistan has been small, one additional factor to consider here is the security regime surrounding it. In exposed sites like Gwadar, CPEC proceeds behind multiple perimeters of fences and military checkpoints, which have significantly hampered local citizens’ freedom of movement.⁸⁴ Security measures governing access to the waters around Gwadar have triggered complaints that they restrict access to traditional fishing grounds and thereby livelihoods.⁸⁵ In Gilgit-Baltistan, home to many Chinese hydropower projects, military checkpoints cut off civilian access to highways whenever Chinese staff and their military escorts are using them.⁸⁶ CPEC’s thorough securitization has also resulted in a climate in which any criticism can be delegitimized as unpatriotic or even sedition, putting those who speak out at acute risk of persecution by security authorities.⁸⁷

When assessing CPEC’s impact on the state of political tensions and outright violence in Pakistan, the promises of a ‘developmental peace’ have clearly not materialized despite the rapid progress on its early priorities of providing energy and connectivity. Instead, it appears to have exposed and exacerbated preexisting governance problems. While the sudden influx of Chinese investments was initially welcomed by virtually all political actors, the challenge to equitably distribute these spoils overburdened the country’s institutions and continued the marginalization of its periphery. In order to achieve a rapid implementation, both Islamabad and Beijing favored a project governance approach modeled on China’s own, marked by centralized bureaucratic decision making, vertical hierarchies, and the prioritization of focal areas. While this model is undeniably effective in delivering infrastructure at speed, a factor highlighted by proponents of CPEC,⁸⁸ it is arguably unsuited to Pakistan’s tenuous multi-ethnic federalism. Where it was eventually modified in line with local political realities, it brought increased influence for the military—further undermining the popularity of CPEC among proponents of civilian rule and minorities. At its worst, CPEC represents a fusion of the Chinese developmental and Pakistani security state, which has triggered a backlash especially in Balochistan.

The BRI in Myanmar

Myanmar shares some of the conditions that contributed to instability in Pakistan, but has seen even higher degrees of violence, primarily as a result of the 2021 coup and subsequent clashes between the military and its opponents. As in Pakistan, root causes long predate the arrival of the BRI and did not deter significant earlier Chinese investments, mainly in resource extraction and local energy generation, which have proven highly controversial.⁸⁹ Myanmar is highly ethnically diverse, though with a clear majority group in the Bamar, who account for about two-thirds of the population, concentrated in the country’s geographical center. Its 135 recognized minorities occupy a vast periphery stretching along Myanmar’s borders, including a 1500 mile one with China. Due to their remoteness and rugged terrain, these areas have long been outside of the control of central governments, forming either acknowledged self-administered areas or de facto states run by so-called ethnic armed organizations (EAOs). Some of these groups operating in the borderlands with China, like the United Wa State Army, have long-standing and semi-diplomatic ties with China, relying on (sometimes illicit) cross-border commerce as their economic base.⁹⁰ As a consequence, Myanmar has experienced one of the world’s longest-running and most complex civil wars between government forces and a highly diverse array of EAOs, some of which are also allied to the military or fighting each other.⁹¹ A similarly drawn-out peace process has been unable to resolve these overlapping conflicts, but intermittently managed to limit the fighting’s intensity.

At the national level, politics have been dominated by the military establishment, which exercised direct political authority from 1962 to 2011. That year saw the onset of a hopeful and seemingly stable trend towards democratization, with three rounds of free nationwide elections and resulting civilian governments. The 2015 election delivered a strong mandate for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which subsequently formed a government in a tenuous relationship with enduring military influence. Greater political freedom under democratization also created a space for civil society groups to mobilize against highly controversial foreign-funded infrastructure projects, especially Chinese ones like the Myitsone dam.⁹² Despite this popular backlash, the NLD era saw Myanmar’s accession to the BRI in 2019, along with a slate of new project proposals centered around a proposed China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC). Similar as CPEC in Pakistan, CMEC covers connectivity, energy generation and industrial parks, connecting the port of Kyaukphyu in the South with a central junction in Mandalay, and continuing to China from there.⁹³ This route closely follows the existing China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines designed to enable resource exports from the Andaman sea to the Chinese border, practically folding them into CMEC. The corridor also brought a slate of newly proposed SEZs in Kyaukphyu as well as the border towns of Muse, Chinshwehaw and Kan Paik Ti. While most of the envisioned infrastructure has not actually been completed, the era of CMEC has seen a rapid increase in bilateral trade by 60% from 2017 to 2023, owing mostly to a doubling of exports to China.⁹⁴ These are predominantly basic minerals and agricultural goods, underlining the resource-extractive focus of Chinese investments in Myanmar and exacerbating its dependence on its larger partner.⁹⁵

Institutional Legitimacy

In putting these plans into practice, successive Myanmar governments have faced the same basic dilemma: on the one hand, attracting Chinese FDI for ambitious development plans could be the key to economic growth, greater political support and stability, and perhaps even a kind of ‘developmental peace’ in the borderlands.⁹⁶ On the other, negative attitudes towards China and perceived dependence on its larger neighbor would carry the risk of eroding governmental legitimacy and sovereignty. This problem is especially acute in infrastructure, where even the military considered overdependence on China a national security risk, while the environmental and social footprint of projects triggered organized local resistance.⁹⁷ In the early years of democratization, the dilemma could be somewhat avoided by diversifying Myanmar’s FDI sources, but the withdrawal of Western funders following the 2017 Rohingya expulsion complicated this balancing act.⁹⁸ Myanmar’s subsequent engagement with the BRI was more limited and cautious than Pakistan’s, but ultimately driven by the same need to acquire development finance without the limitations set by Western governments.⁹⁹

Beside persistent anti-Chinese attitudes, Chinese infrastructure has triggered significant local controversies over its practices. Of particular concern is the problem of land-grabbing, with local farmers in Kyaukphyu facing governmental pressure to sell their land for a proposed SEZ at a rate fixed by the government below the market price.¹⁰⁰ Additionally, jobs that are created by such projects are often unattainable for locals due to their lack of education. As a result, CMEC is seen to mainly benefit a small number of upper-class Bamar who can act as land brokers and fixers for Chinese interests, while no mass creation of attractive jobs has taken place.¹⁰¹ Local stakeholders and authorities in minority regions—where key projects including Kyaukphyu and the cross-border SEZs are located—were generally left with the impression that their interests and input were not heeded in project design.¹⁰² In the remote border regions of Kachin state, this new infrastructure is not perceived as developmental in nature, but further enabling and enshrining local resource extraction for the benefit of external investors: Chinese economic activity is mainly concentrated in mining, and the Kan Paik Ti SEZ’s only operational element is a jade trading center.¹⁰³ Notably, these problems already posed themselves under the NLD government, leading to criticism from minorities and rural residents that it privileged the interests of Chinese investors and urban Bamar.¹⁰⁴

In navigating the legitimacy drawbacks of cooperation with China, the NLD government could however draw upon Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal popularity to sell the BRI to a skeptical audience. It scored an early success in renegotiating the terms for the existing Kyaukphyu deep sea port project, achieving a reduction in scope and debt load while also strengthening domestic control by raising its own stake from 15% to 30%. As in Pakistan, this mainly reflected a Chinese willingness to concede to local central governments in order to achieve a speedy BRI implementation. In order to assuage concerns over collusion and rising Chinese influence, the new government also designed a tighter project governance regime, mandating competitive bidding, stakeholder outreach, and environmental and social impact assessments.¹⁰⁵ Instead of relying on Chinese pitches for projects, a nationwide ‘Sustainable Development Plan’ (SDP) was drawn up for 2018–2030 and established a screening committee to vet proposed projects against its goals. Notably, the SDP explicitly established a connection between development and political stability, naming ‘peace and national reconciliation’ as its first goal, and a more equal resource distribution and inclusive development as the prerequisites for lasting peace.¹⁰⁶

Perhaps even more significantly, the struggle over CMEC governance also involved a civil-military dimension. Through its conglomerate ‘Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited’ (UMEHL), the military is a direct stakeholder in some joint ventures, and the period of democratic transition saw attempts to wrest control and profits away from it and towards the civilian government. For example, the controlling stake in the controversial Letpadaung copper mine was shifted from UMEHL to the government following an investigation in 2013.¹⁰⁷ The new rules for project selection under the NLD government also limited the ability of military-aligned interests to negotiate kickbacks, a practice that appears to have been resurrected under junta governance.¹⁰⁸ The threat which these reforms posed to the military’s economic power base may have contributed to its decision to launch a coup against the elected government in 2021.

While the NLD’s changes to infrastructural governance and oversight continued a trend of better accountability to local concerns, some shortcomings remained: first, as mentioned above, CMEC and high-profile legacy projects were designed and managed by the central government, without much input from peripheral regions. This has not just resulted in a perceived lack of local ownership, but also reignited tensions between Bamar-dominated central authorities and states that are predominantly inhabited by minorities, especially Rakhine and Kachin.¹⁰⁹ Second, the details of CMEC, its exact composition of projects, and the loan arrangements to finance them have never been made public, sparking popular concerns of a sell-out to China. Third, attempts to improve governmental oversight were tightly limited by available administrative resources—for example, one source described the NLD-era office in charge of scrutinizing impact assessments as so understaffed that it could not keep up with the paperwork.¹¹⁰ Still, the relative success of the NLD government’s navigating between a tighter embrace of China and maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of its domestic constituency can be seen in its subsequent electoral performance: in November 2020, it was able to score another resounding electoral victory, expanding its parliamentary margin to 397 out of 476 seats.¹¹¹

Political Violence

In response to its lack of electoral competitiveness, Myanmar’s military once again seized power in a coup in February 2021, aborting the country’s complicated democratic transition and changing approaches to infrastructural governance. In the wake of the coup, Myanmar has seen a massive escalation in political violence, distributed over several overlapping conflicts predominantly pitching the military against either democratic opposition forces or EAOs. With an estimated 29,752 fatalities from all causes of political violence in 2021–2022, Myanmar’s multi-front civil war has become one of the most lethal conflicts on Earth, and the most severe currently experienced by a major BRI investment destination.¹¹² Fighting between the military, ‘People’s Defense Forces’ (PDFs) aligned with the opposition National Unity Government (NUG), and EAOs has spread across all parts of the country and multiple fronts, with areas of north-central Burma and northern border areas particularly heavily affected. These regions are also home to prominent elements of CMEC, including several cross-border SEZs, the Muse-Mandalay railway and China-Myanmar pipeline.

So far, the new military government, officially a ‘State Administration Council’ (SAC), also appears to be much less capable of navigating the drawbacks of working with China.¹¹³ Desperate to access FDIs and revenues amidst a retreat of foreign investors, it has agreed to a slate of new projects and fast-tracked these while cutting back on regulation.¹¹⁴ Oversight is now barely existent, as new projects are cleared without impact assessments (unless conducted voluntarily by the investors), and there is practically no bureaucracy left to process these materials.¹¹⁵ Amidst a general crackdown on civil society activism, protests against labor conditions, displacement or environmental damages have been criminalized, and in many parts of the country—including the SEZs—subjected to a martial law regime.¹¹⁶ Private Chinese investors have also benefitted from less scrutiny and regulatory obstacles in post-coup Myanmar. In some of the borderlands, especially northern Kachin state, the return to civil war has created spaces in which highly environmentally damaging rare earth mining can be pursued with impunity.¹¹⁷ According to one respondent, domestic companies that were issued mining licenses under the NLD government are now used as shells for Chinese investors, and land-grabbing has become rampant as governmental oversight has vanished.¹¹⁸ However, the escalating violence has also stalled CMEC’s overall progress, and its known projects have been put on hold with the exception of Kyaukphyu port. Criminal enterprises, many of which are both run by and target other Chinese citizens, have proliferated in Myanmar’s borderlands with China and Thailand.¹¹⁹ Finally, any ongoing Chinese infrastructure cooperation with the SAC can now be interpreted as lending it legitimacy and an economic lifeline, which has further tarnished China’s image in the eyes of junta opponents.¹²⁰

Some Chinese projects have been directly caught up in the fighting, most notably the controversial Letpadaung copper mine in Sagaing, a central front in the fighting between the military and PDFs.¹²¹ As a joint venture between China’s Wanbao mining and the military-owned Myanmar Economic Holdings, the mine was proposed as a target by PDF commanders due to the economic sustenance which it provides to the junta.¹²² After military forces deployed on the premises, 2021–2022 saw several clashes at the mine itself, rendering it non-operational since. PDF commanders have repeatedly threatened to attack the China-Myanmar pipeline, China’s most valuable local economic and strategic asset, to punish Beijing’s economic cooperation with the junta. This triggered an immediate warning from the Chinese side, as well as further military protection measures by the junta, including more troop deployments and reportedly the laying of minefields along some vulnerable sections.¹²³ However, no such attacks have actually materialized, as the NUG moved swiftly to rein in its military wing over concerns of maintaining its own political relationship with China.¹²⁴

Despite strong and widespread anti-Chinese sentiment in Myanmar, Chinese actors have been remarkably successful in co-opting elites among all belligerents to ensure protection of their investments—usually by offering some of the spoils in exchange.¹²⁵ This is a key difference with Pakistan, where insurgent groups have proven resistant to similar offers.¹²⁶ As a result, attacks on Chinese projects are less prevalent than in Pakistan, especially accounting for the escalation in violence since 2021.

This relative safety has been bought with a heavily militarized security regime, which has significantly impacted local citizens. The military’s own economic stake in CMEC and willingness to assuage Chinese worries has triggered the deployment of troops around project sites, raids on surrounding villages suspected of harboring PDFs, the institution of martial law in SEZs, checkpoint regimes inhibiting local movement, and the mining of perimeters.¹²⁷ In Kachin state, SAC-aligned militias are protecting and profiting from rare earths mining undertaken by Chinese investors, and are reportedly cracking down on environmental protests.¹²⁸ Meanwhile, in EAO-occupied areas, Beijing has managed to draw upon its long-standing ties with some of these groups to organize local protection regimes: most recently, a grouping of three northern EAOs declared Chinese investments to be under their protection and threatened military retaliation against attackers.¹²⁹ In October 2023, the same alliance conducted a successful offensive against SAC-aligned forces in Northern Shan State, which established control over the cross-border economic zones at Muse and Chinshwehaw.¹³⁰ Across the country, security forces assigned to protect BRI projects are drawn from the ranks of conflict parties, co-opted through arrangements that contribute to their economic sustenance and political influence, and in the case of the border areas, the maintenance of a war economy.¹³¹

The multi-front civil war that has engulfed Myanmar since the coup has pushed the BRI down the list of popular concerns, and makes it hard to isolate its own impact. It is however clear that the coup has cost China a local partner who enjoyed democratic legitimacy and was somewhat capable of bridging grassroots concerns and investor interests. By comparison, popular anger over Beijing’s perceived closeness with the junta has further reduced acceptance of Chinese-provided infrastructure, while the loss of civil liberties has also made it much harder to organize against it.¹³² This radical shift in Myanmar’s governance and the violence that has since engulfed the country can obviously not be blamed on the BRI, but its continued presence is perceived as taking advantage of the impunity created by the coup, undermining labor and environmental standards, and providing economic sustenance to the junta.¹³³ Additionally, the vagueness of the BRI label and the lack of authoritative information on it has led to unrelated Chinese business activities—including illicit ones—sometimes being identified as part of the same complex, further tarnishing its image. Under these conditions, CMEC’s long-term viability is questionable, especially when it comes to the stretched-out connectivity designs that cross multiple areas with intense fighting.

Conclusion

The two cases discussed above stand out for the levels of organized violence they have experienced in recent years, some of which has directly affected local BRI projects. Despite these problems, they have attracted significant and ongoing Chinese infrastructure investments, even at a time when these have dropped globally as a result of greater caution.¹³⁴ They present extremely challenging environments for any kind of external infrastructure funder, and Beijing’s willingness to take on the associated risks sets the BRI apart from many of its competitors. This has been advertised as one of its features, and inspired Chinese theorists to propose the model of a ‘developmental peace’, in which economic development and political stability form a virtuous circle. However, such benefits materialized in neither of the cases presented here. Instead, local BRI implementations—often in the form of megaprojects championed by central governments, but rejected by peripheral regions which they traverse—have at times exacerbated existing tensions along these same lines. The main reason for this can be found in the capacity (or lack thereof) of local political institutions to implement infrastructure projects in a manner that is considered fair, clean and in the interests of all affected stakeholders. This standard was not met in either country, albeit to different degrees across cases and dimensions. Grievances have been frequently ignored and sometimes met with heavy repression, often at the hands of security authorities with their own stakes in BRI projects. As a result, implementing governments have seen their own legitimacy and public trust suffer, making them less able to integrate fractured societies.

It is important to note that the root causes of conflicts in both cases predate the BRI by far and were thus not caused by it. Existing center-periphery and civil-military tensions were however reignited by the arrival of contentious, large-scale infrastructure projects that are emblematic for the BRI. The reason for this is that they inherently privilege specific groups: the technocratic, bureaucratic and political elites in national capitals are in charge of their planning; and the military authorities tasked with providing security for them.¹³⁵ Projects that are exclusively designed and implemented by these elites, and seen to further shore up their own position, will almost inevitably be rejected by marginalized and peripheral groups. Actual developmental benefits of BRI projects accrue mainly in economically better-off, urban areas, whereas in peripheral zones like Balochistan and Kachin state, its local manifestations are resource-extractive and seen to perpetuate their exploitation and marginalization.¹³⁶

There is evidence that controversies over megaprojects have already triggered an adjustment in the BRI, with Xi Jinping calling for a shift towards ‘smaller and more beautiful’ projects in 2021.¹³⁷ Related changes in project financing had occurred even earlier: According to China Aid Data statistics,¹³⁸ in the five years between 2013 and 2017, China financed 1985 overseas infrastructure projects with a total volume of 394.6 billion USD, 615 of which were megaprojects with a volume of more than 100 million USD. The slightly shorter four-year period from 2018 to 2021 saw only 1244 such projects with a total volume of 164.7 billion USD, and megaprojects almost halved to 325. Such diversification will improve the BRI’s future risk control, but existing commitments in conflict zones remain and require an active risk management strategy.

While many of these problems are long-running and stem from existing flaws in local political institutions rather than Chinese agency, they are also influenced by BRI-specific practices. One of them is a strong focus on central governments as preferred partners, and disinterest in reaching out to other stakeholders unless their consent is institutionally required. Interestingly, this practice is not rooted in a strict interpretation of host state sovereignty, as the case of Myanmar shows: here, China maintains parallel partnerships with belligerents than maintain de facto control of parts of the country. Likewise, China’s lack of political preconditions for BRI financing, and flexibility in dealing with host governments of all stripes, makes the BRI somewhat resilient against instability and domestic power shifts. In both Pakistan and Myanmar, the BRI is moving ahead and expanding despite government turnovers, and in the latter case a complete regime change. However, this comes at the price of association with authorities that lack legitimacy, and are often unwilling or incapable of building inclusive political institutions. It is unlikely that Chinese development finance will ever embrace formal political conditionality as Western funders do, but exerting more pressure on host countries to pursue reform and reconciliation would arguably bolster the BRI’s long-term prospects. This would not require a radical break in Chinese diplomacy, which is already deeply involved in active conflict management and the domestic politics of both countries: in Pakistan, China has actively built an all-party consensus around CPEC and even attempted to win over disaffected insurgent groups¹³⁹; in Myanmar, it has used its economic leverage over multiple conflict parties to broker ceasefires around exposed CMEC projects.¹⁴⁰

Another problem is the belief in ‘development’ as a summum bonum that can unite deeply torn societies. This is rooted in the specific Chinese experience of political stabilization after the Mao era, but cannot be easily transferred to states in which such efforts are invariably politicized and at danger of reigniting tensions. Development is an inherently political issue, and where it is proceeding unevenly, also a very contentious one. Where local political institutions do not distribute costs and benefits evenly, it is also on the Chinese side to become more active. Here, the BRI would benefit from better early-stage political risk assessment practices, and active stakeholder outreach to affected groups even where they do not have the power to resist projects. Some such measures are already underway in the form of consensus-building formats and corporate social responsibility efforts. One bright spot is the provision of education, where both vocational training centers in SEZs designed to teach locally required skills and scholarships to Chinese universities have seen significant interest, and boosted acceptance of the BRI.¹⁴¹

Finally, security for BRI projects in conflict settings is provided by local military and paramilitary groups that are active belligerents. In both cases, this has proven a somewhat effective short-term fix, allowing for progression of the BRI despite escalating violence and significant threats against it. However, these measures have often put an inordinate burden on local communities, further alienated them from the BRI, and resulted in its association with conflict parties.¹⁴² Outsourcing security to private security services would arguably be a better solution, provided that high standards for operating practices are met. Detailed suggestions for a ‘supply-side’ expansion and reform of Chinese security providers have already been put forward,¹⁴³ and the BRI’s advancement in conflict states has clearly provided a demand as well.

Most fundamentally however, the BRI’s patchy track record in conflict states speaks to a lack of attention towards infrastructural and developmental politics. Backlashes to projects often stem from an implementation that prioritizes technical dimensions like speed, efficiency and security, and privileges the local interests that can best guarantee these. The inherently political dimension of infrastructure, particularly when it comes to megaprojects that seek to transform social as well as natural spaces, is too often ignored or consciously avoided. While the BRI’s announced shift towards greener, smaller and ‘more beautiful’ projects can avoid some of the related grievances, fully remedying this situation will require greater attention towards specific conflict risks among Chinese enterprises and state regulators, ideally in the form of mandatory assessments before funding is approved.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Stiftung Oekohaus.

Notes

¹ Hong Yu, ‘Motivation Behind China’s “One Belt One Road” Initiatives and Establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’, Journal of Contemporary China 26(105), (2017), pp. 353–368.

² Kevin Cai, ‘The One Belt One Road and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: Beijing’s New Strategy of Geoeconomics and Geopolitics’, Journal of Contemporary China 27(114), (2018), pp 831–847.

³ Colin Flint and Cuiping Zhu, ‘The Geopolitics of Connectivity, Cooperation, and Hegemonic Competition: The Belt and Road Initiative’, Geoforum 99, (2019), pp. 95–101; Nadège Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (National Bureau of Asian Research, 2017).

⁴ Daniel Russell and Blake Berger, Weaponizing the Belt and Road Initiative (Asia Policy Institute, 2020).

⁵ Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri, ‘Debunking the Myth of “Debt-Trap Diplomacy”: How Recipient Countries Shape China’s Belt and Road Initiative’, Chatham House, 2020.

⁶ Cheng-Chwee Kuik, ‘Asymmetry and Authority: Theorizing Southeast Asian Responses to China’s Belt and Road Initiative’, Asian Perspective 45(2), (2021), pp. 255–276.

⁷ Filippo Boni and Katharine Adeney, ‘The Impact of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor on Pakistan’s Federal System: The Politics of the CPEC’, Asian Survey 60(3), (2020), pp. 441–465; Maher Hameed, ‘The Politics of the China―Pakistan Economic Corridor’, Palgrave Communications 4(64), (2018); Matthew McCartney, The Dragon from the Mountains (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

⁸ Pascal Abb, Robert Swaine and Ilya Jones, ‘Road to Peace or Bone of Contention? The Impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on Conflict States’, PRIF Report. January 2021; Chuchu Zhang, Chaowei Xiao and Helin Liu, ‘Spatial Big Data Analysis of Political Risks Along the Belt and Road’, Sustainability 11(8), (2019), p. 2216.

⁹ Jinping Xi, ‘Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road’, Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the BRI Forum for International Cooperation, May 14, 2017.

¹⁰ State Council Information Office of the PRC (SCIO), ‘The Belt and Road Initiative: A Key Pillar of the Global Community of Shared Future’, (SCIO, 2023).

¹¹ Yin He, 发展和平: 联合国维和建和中的中国方案 [‘Developmental Peace: China’s Programme in UN Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding’], Guoji Zhengzhi Yanjiu (4), (2017), pp. 10–32.

¹² Laur Kiik, ‘Nationalism and Anti-Ethno-Politics: Why “Chinese Development” Failed at Myanmar’s Myitsone Dam’, Eurasian Geography and Economics 57(3), (2016), pp. 374–402; also see Jones and Hameiri, ‘Debunking the Myth’.

¹³ Scott Thacker et al., ‘Infrastructure for Sustainable Development’, Nature Sustainability 2, (2019), pp. 324–331; United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), International Good Practice Principles for Sustainable Infrastructure (UNEP, 2022).

¹⁴ Brian Larkin, ‘The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure’, Annual Review of Anthropology 42, (2013), pp. 327–343.

¹⁵ Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta and Hannah Appel (eds.), The Promise of Infrastructure (Duke University Press, 2018); Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox, ‘The Enchantments of Infrastructure’, Mobilities 7(4), (2012), pp. 521–536.

¹⁶ Hameed, ‘The politics’; Majed Akhter, ‘Infrastructure Nation: State Space Hegemony and Hydraulic Regionalism in Pakistan’, Antipode 47(4), (2015), pp. 849–870.

¹⁷ César Calderón and Luis Servén, The Effects of Infrastructure Development on Growth and Income Distribution (The World Bank, 2004).

¹⁸ Sinclair Dinnen, ‘The Twin Processes of Nation Building and State Building’, SSGM Briefing Note. January, 2007.

¹⁹ Larkin, ‘The politics’; Harvey and Knox, Roads.

²⁰ Kiik, ‘Nationalism’.

²¹ Ammar Malik et al., Banking on the Belt and Road: Insights from a New Global Dataset of 13,427 Chinese Development Projects (AidData at William & Mary, 2021).

²² Thomas Hale, Chuyu Liu and Johannes Urpelainen, ‘Belt and Road Decision-Making in China and Recipient Countries: How and to What Extent Does Sustainability Matter?’ (ISEP BSG and ClimateWorks Foundation, 2021).

²³ Jones and Hameiri, ‘Debunking’.

²⁴ Abb, Swaine and Jones, ‘Road’.

²⁵ Stephen Graham, ‘Disruption by Design: Urban Infrastructure and Political Violence’, in Disrupted Cities ed. Stephen Graham (Routledge, 2010).

²⁶ Justin Yifu Lin and Doerte Doemeland, Beyond Keynesianism: Global Infrastructure Investments in Times of Crisis, Policy Research Working Paper Series 5940 (The World Bank, 2012).

²⁷ Witold Henisz and Bennet Zelner, Political Risk and Infrastructure Investment (The World Bank, 1999).

²⁸ Niels Hermes and Robert Lensink, ‘Changing the Conditions for Development Aid: A New Paradigm?’, Journal of Development Studies 37(6), (2001), pp. 1–16.

²⁹ Malik et al., ‘Banking’.

³⁰ Jones and Hameiri, ‘Debunking’.

³¹ Deborah Brautigam, The Dragon’s Gift: The True Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 148; 285.

³² Heng Jiang, 一带一路地缘政治风险的评价与管理 [‘Evaluation and Management of Geopolitical Risks to the “Belt and Road”’], Journal of International Trade (8), (2015), pp. 21–24.

³³ To estimate overall Chinese infrastructure investments, the figure draws on data from the China Global Investment Tracker (CGIT; see Derek Scissors, China Global Investment Tracker (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 2019)), restricted to the category of infrastructure construction investments in countries after they joined the BRI. For state fragility, it draws on the State Fragility Index (SFI), using data for 2022.

³⁴ Haiquan Liu, 一带一路战略的安全挑战与中国的选择 [‘Security Challenges to the “Belt and Road” Strategy and China’s Choices’], Pacific Journal 23(2), (2015); Yun Ma, 一带一路建设中的风险管控问题 [‘Risk Management and Control Issues in the Construction of the “Belt and Road”’], China Review of Political Economy 6(04), (2015), pp. 189–203; Ping Zhou, 一带一路面临的地缘政治风险及其管控 [‘Geopolitical Risks Faced by the “Belt and Road” and Their Management’], Exploration and Free Views 1, 2016.

³⁵ National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), 企业境外投资管理办法 [‘Measures for the Administration of Overseas Investments by Companies’], (NDRC, 2017).

³⁶ Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), 关于驻外经商机构为企业办理对外承包工程项目投标(议标)核准意见的暂行规定 [‘Provisional Regulations for the Approval of Bids for Foreign-Contracted Engineering Projects by Businesses Stationed Abroad’], (MOFCOM, 2015).

³⁷ Yumeng Xu, ‘Policy Analysis: The NDRC’s Reg. No. 11 China’s New Capital Control’, Hastings Business Law Journal 16(1), (2020), pp. 95–118.

³⁸ Xi, ‘Work Together’.

³⁹ He, ‘Developmental Peace’; Steven Kuo, Chinese Peace in Africa: From Peacekeeper to Peacemaker (Routledge, 2020), pp. 11–16.

⁴⁰ Oliver Jütersonke, et al., ‘Norm Contestation and Normative Transformation in Global Peacebuilding Order(s): The Cases of China, Japan and Russia’, International Studies Quarterly 65(4), (2021), pp. 944–959.

⁴¹ Pascal Abb, ‘China’s Emergence as a Peacebuilding Actor’, ASPR Policy Brief 4/2018; Xinyu Yuan, ‘The Chinese Approach to Peacebuilding: Contesting Liberal Peace?’, Third World Quarterly 43(7), (2022), pp. 1798–1816.

⁴² Tom Kramer, ‘Ethnic Conflict and Lands Rights in Myanmar’, Social Research 82(2), (2015), pp. 355–374; Theodore Wright, ‘Center-Periphery Relations and Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: Sindhis, Muhajirs and Punjabis’, Comparative Politics 23(3), (1991), pp. 299–312.

⁴³ United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), The 2021/2022 Human Development Report (UNDP, 2022).

⁴⁴ Wright, ‘Center-Periphery’.

⁴⁵ Adeel Khan, ‘Renewed Ethnonationalist Insurgency in Balochistan, Pakistan: The Militarized State and Continuing Economic Deprivation’, Asian Survey 49(6), (2009), pp. 1071–1091.

⁴⁶ Daniel Markey, China’s Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia (Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 61–65.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 48; Zahid Shahab Ahmed, ‘Impact of the China—Pakistan Economic Corridor on Nation-Building in Pakistan’, Journal of Contemporary China 28(117), (2019), pp. 400–414.

⁴⁸ Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Pakistan (MPDSI), ‘Energy Projects Under CPEC’, (https://cpec.gov.pk/energy).

⁴⁹ McCartney, Dragon, pp. 87–91.

⁵⁰ According to trade statistics compiled by the Chinese General Administration of Customs, http://gdfs.customs.gov.cn/customs/302249/zfxxgk/2799825/302274/index.html.

⁵¹ Syed Ali Shah, ‘Economic Corridor: ANP Denounces Change in Route Calls APC’, Dawn, May 1, 2015.

⁵² Kaiser Bengali, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: The Route Controversy (Government of Balochistan, 2015).

⁵³ Interviews with an official of the Balochistan provincial government and a Baloch journalist, November 2020.

⁵⁴ Khurram Husain, ‘Exclusive: CPEC Master Plan Revealed’, Dawn, June 21, 2017.

⁵⁵ Iftikhar Khan, ‘China to Get 91pc Gwadar Income, Minister Tells Senate’, Dawn, 25 November 2017.

⁵⁶ Interviews with an official of the Balochistan provincial government, November 2020, and a Baloch politician, November 2020.

⁵⁷ Interview with a think tank expert on CPEC, May 2022.

⁵⁸ Interview with an official of the Balochistan provincial government, November 2020.

⁵⁹ Majed Akhter, ‘Infrastructure Nation: State Space Hegemony and Hydraulic Regionalism in Pakistan’, Antipode 47(4), (2015), pp. 849–870.

⁶⁰ Pascal Abb, ‘All Geopolitics Is Local: The China—Pakistan Economic Corridor Amidst Overlapping Centre—Periphery Relations’, Third World Quarterly 44(1), (2022), pp. 76–95; Boni and Adeney, ‘The Impact’.

⁶¹ David Brewster, ‘Why the Pakistan Crisis Spells Trouble for Our Region’, The Lowy Interpreter, June 22, 2023.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Mushtaq Ghumman, ‘Govt Decides to Continue “Minimum” Power Load-Shedding Till Dec’, Business Recorder, June 29, 2022.

⁶⁴ Interview with an expert on civil-military relations and an academic expert, November 2020.

⁶⁵ Interviews with an expert on civil-military relations and an academic expert, November 2020.

⁶⁶ Interviews with two academic experts on CPEC, October/November 2020.

⁶⁷ Interviews with a Baloch journalist, November 2020; a former member of the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, November 2020; and an academic expert on CPEC, April 2021.

⁶⁸ According to government’s official CPEC website, <https://cpec.gov.pk/energy>.

⁶⁹ Interviews with environmental activists in Lahore and Karachi, May 2022.

⁷⁰ Interview with an environmental activist in Lahore, May 2022.

⁷¹ Interviews with a Baloch politician, November 2020, and a former member of the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, November 2020.

⁷² Interview with a think tank expert on CPEC, May 2022.

⁷³ Abb, ‘All Geopolitics’.

⁷⁴ Interviews with with a Baloch politician, November 2020, and a former member of the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, November 2020.

⁷⁵ Interview with an official of the Balochistan provincial government, November 2020.

⁷⁶ Markey, China’s Western Horizon, p. 59.

⁷⁷ Based on a query of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD; LaFree and Dugan 2007) of all terror incidents in Pakistan during this time period that had a relation to CPEC or other Chinese projects in the country. Since the GTD coverage only extends to June 2021, two further attacks since were manually added to the total.

⁷⁸ Adnan Aamir, ‘China Wants Own Security Company to Protect Assets in Pakistan’, Nikkei Asia, June 28, 2022.

⁷⁹ Based on a query of the GTD.

⁸⁰ According to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, https://www.acleddata.com/.

⁸¹ Ibid.

⁸² Interview with a Baloch politician, November 2020.

⁸³ Lucas Webber and Adnan Aamir, ‘China Risks Militants’ Wrath in Afghanistan Pakistan and Beyond’, Nikkei Asia, February 21, 2023.

⁸⁴ Interview with a Baloch journalist, November 2020, and a Baloch politician, November 2020.

⁸⁵ Interview with a Baloch journalist, November 2020.

⁸⁶ Interview with an academic expert on CPEC, May 2022.

⁸⁷ Interviews with multiple academic experts on CPEC, April 2021 and May 2022.

⁸⁸ Interviews with a think tank expert and an SEZ board member, May 2022.

⁸⁹ Debby Chan and Ngai Pun, ‘Renegotiating Belt and Road Cooperation: Social Resistance in a Sino—Myanmar Copper Mine’, Third World Quarterly 41(12), (2020), pp. 2109–2129; Xue Gong, Chinese Mining Companies and Local Mobilization in Myanmar (Carnegie Endowment, 2022); Kiik, ‘Nationalism’.

⁹⁰ United States Institute of Peace (USIP), China’s Role in Myanmar’s Internal Conflicts (USIP, 2018).

⁹¹ Kramer, ‘Ethnic Conflict’.

⁹² Kiik, ‘Nationalism’.

⁹³ Sudha Ramachandran, ‘The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor: Delays Ahead’, China Brief 20(7), (2020).

⁹⁴ According to trade statistics compiled by the Chinese General Administration of Customs, http://gdfs.customs.gov.cn/customs/302249/zfxxgk/2799825/302274/index.html.

⁹⁵ Ah Oh Yoon, ‘Assessing Myanmar’s Trade Dependence on China During the Reform Period of the 2010s: A Sectoral Value Chain Approach’, The Pacific Review 37(2), (2024), pp. 277–300.

⁹⁶ David Brenner, ‘The Development-Insecurity Nexus: Geo-Economic Transformations and Violence in Myanmar’, LSE Working Paper 1/2017.

⁹⁷ Kiik, ‘Nationalism’.

⁹⁸ Yuka Kobayashi and Josephine King, ‘Myanmar’s Strategy in the China—Myanmar Economic Corridor: A Failure in Hedging?’ International Affairs 98(3), pp. 1013–1032.

⁹⁹ Interview with a think tank expert, April 2023.

¹⁰⁰ Interview with a Rakhine activist, February 2023.

¹⁰¹ Interviews with a Rakhine activist, February 2023, an environmental activist, March 2023, and a labor organizer, April 2023.

¹⁰² Interviews with two Rakhine activists, February 2023.

¹⁰³ Interview with a Kachin community organizer, September 2023.

¹⁰⁴ Interview with a Rakhine activist, February 2023, and two environmental activists, March 2023.

¹⁰⁵ Interview with an environmental activist, March 2023.

¹⁰⁶ Ministry of Planning and Finance Myanmar (MPF), Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan (2018–2030), (MPF, 2018).

¹⁰⁷ Gong, Chinese Mining.

¹⁰⁸ Interview with a think tank expert, April 2023.

¹⁰⁹ Interviews with two Rakhine activists, February 2023.

¹¹⁰ Interview with an NGO adviser, May 2023.

¹¹¹ Lucas Myers, ‘What Myanmar’s 2020 Election Tells Us About U.S.-China Competition’, Wilson Center Asia Dispatches, January 12, 2021.

¹¹² According to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, https://www.acleddata.com/.

¹¹³ Interviews with a Rakhine activist, February 2023, and a labor organizer, April 2023.

¹¹⁴ Interviews with a labor organizer and a think tank expert, April 2023.

¹¹⁵ Interviews with think tank experts, April 2023.

¹¹⁶ Interview with a labor organizer, April 2023.

¹¹⁷ Interview with an environmental activist, March 2023.

¹¹⁸ Interview with a Kachin community organizer, September 2023.

¹¹⁹ Jason Tower, ‘China’s Metastasizing Myanmar Problem’, United States Institute of Peace, July 11, 2023.

¹²⁰ Interviews with think tank experts, April 2023.

¹²¹ Institute for Strategy and Policy Myanmar (ISP), ‘China’s Major Investment Projects and Conflict Map’, ISP Mapping 6(9), (2022).

¹²² Interviews with think tank experts, April 2023.

¹²³ Marwaan Macaan-Markar, ‘Myanmar Land Mine Danger Grows as Military Rings Chinese Assets’, Nikkei Asia, July 3, 2023.

¹²⁴ Interview with a think tank expert, April 2023.

¹²⁵ Interviews with think tank experts, April 2023.

¹²⁶ Interview with an expert on CPEC, November 2020.

¹²⁷ Interviews with think tank experts on CMEC, a labor organizer, and an environmental activist, March and April 2023.

¹²⁸ Interview with an environmental activist, March 2022.

¹²⁹ CNI Myanmar (CNIM), ‘Those Who Disrupt International Investment Projects Will Be Taken Action Against’, 4 July 2023.

¹³⁰ Institute for Strategy and Policy Myanmar (ISP), ‘Operation 1027: China’s Economic Entanglement with Anticipated and Unforeseen Risks’, ISP On Point 18(12), November 2023.

¹³¹ Interviews with think tank experts on CMEC, April 2023.

¹³² Interview with a labor organizer, April 2023.

¹³³ Interviews with an environmental activist, a labor organizer and a think tank expert, March/April 2023.

¹³⁴ Malik et al., ‘Banking’.

¹³⁵ Interviews with a Baloch politician, November 2020, an academic expert on CPEC, April 2021, a Rakhine activist, February 2023, and a Kachin women’s activist, September 2023.

¹³⁶ Interviews with an official of the Balochistan provincial government, November 2020, and a Kachin community organizer, September 2023.

¹³⁷ Christoph Nedopil, ‘China’s BRI Isn’t Going Away It’s Getting Smaller and Greener’, Nikkei Asia, October 13, 2023.

¹³⁸ Samantha Custer et al., Tracking Chinese Development Finance: An Application of AidData’s TUFF 3.0 Methodology (AidData at William & Mary, 2023).

¹³⁹ Abb, ‘All Geopolitics’.

¹⁴⁰ International Crisis Group (ICG), ‘Scam Centres and Ceasefires: China-Myanmar Ties Since the Coup’, 27 March 2024.

¹⁴¹ Interviews with an academic expert in CPEC and a former SEZ administrator, May 2022.

¹⁴² Interviews with a Baloch journalist, November 2020, and an activist from Kyaukphyu, February 2023.

¹⁴³ Charhar Institute, 私营安保公司: 中国海外安全的供给侧改革 (‘Private Security Companies: Supply-Side Reform of China’s Overseas Security’) (Charhar Institute, 2015).