China's Global Development Initiative is seen as the country's vision to become the leader in global development. The initiative identifies supporting developing nations in decreasing poverty, improving public health, and other issues. The Center for Strategic and International Studies decided to host a panel discussion on GDI on Sept. 12.
Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS, served as the moderator.
Blanchette said the Global Development Initiative was first announced in September 2021 by Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the UN General Assembly. It’s a follow-up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, launched by Xi in 2013.
Since then, GDI has increasingly appeared in bilateral statements in Chinese state media and that leads to a whole host of questions, he said.
“Where does GDI fit into China's overall approach to development or development assistance? Is the GDI intended as a replacement of the BRI? Is it an adjunct? Is it an add-on?” Blanchette said. “And of course, inevitably, given where U.S.-China relations are, there is a host of commentary asking if the GDI is yet another element of China's global galactic strategy to overtake the United States.”
Panelist for the discussion include Deborah Brautigam, director of China-Africa Research Initiative and Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University SAIS; Samantha Custer, director of policy analysis at AidData at the College of William & Mary; Anthea Mulakala, senior director for international development cooperation at The Asia Foundation; and Joseph Asunka, CEO of Afrobarometer.
Blanchette, as part of a wide-ranging, 70-minute discussion, asked the panelists a basic question: What is the Global Development Initiative?
“You see, the GDI is actually still very big. It's a statement of principles. It's a statement of support for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and what's called the 2030 agenda,” Brautigam said. “And it's what China's going to do in support of those U.N. development goals. But it's even broader than that. It's what China's responsibilities are now as a developing country. I think the Chinese themselves have not worked out what the GDI is.”
Mulakala said it’s a vague term for an overall concept.
“However, Chinese development cooperation is not something that's new. So the GDI is somewhat like the BRI, it attempts to connect the dots of the various things that China has been doing in development cooperation over decades.”
“It has a vision feel. And it also advocates China's vision with the principles, priorities and governmental governance arrangement,” she said. “That action is very much about development. So there are some clear distinctions between it and the BRI in case people are getting confused. As I said earlier, BRI and GDI are a parallel track.
Custer said there is a sweeping principle behind this announcement.
“I think it's also partly a campaign speech and of a leadership bid for China as a global leader at the forefront of the SDGs (Suitable Development Goals) a responsible partner in helping countries learn from an emulated success story,” she said. “In a way, it's a good way to inoculate itself against some of the negative criticism that the BRI has received over the years. And then it's also a big-tent umbrella similar to the way that theory was pitched, kind of this very inclusive club.”
Mulakala said BRI has been the dominant track that people have been aware of in terms of China's development cooperation, aid and investment. GDI has been introduced as more of a parallel track in compliment to this dominant approach.
“As a result of COVID and also since 2016, there has been a decline in BRI investment globally. So what China is tending to focus on now is completing the investments that have already been committed,” she said. “And during the pandemic, there were some significant achievements, including the completion of the China-Lao Railway. And also significant progress on Indonesia's Jakarta rail as well. So China's approach now is to learn from experience to date, whether it's good or whether it's bad and adapt and refine what they do going forward.
Mulakala said it’s important to note that China has been doing development cooperation for a very, very long time. A 2021 white paper explains China's vision for international development cooperation, seeing itself assuming a very significant global responsibility, not only as a provider, but also as a promoter of new trends and modalities.
GDI moves this approach forward, she said.
Blanchette talked about the GDI and the Global Security Initiative being paired by the Chinese.
“This is a very tentative hypothesis. You know, if you look at the Global Security Initiative, in some sense, there's nothing new,” he said. “It's just China's five principles of peaceful coexistence, repackaged with the addition of this idea of indivisible security, which, of course, has strong connotations to Russia and Putin, but in theory dates back to the Helsinki process of the late 1970s. So you could say it's just a rebranding.
“But I did find it instructive that the GSI emerges in April, a month or so, you know, a couple of months after the war in Ukraine, and a clear recognition that the discourse on global security is shifting rapidly. NATO expansion. U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy,” Blanchette said. “The GDI feels unrelated to security architecture, but there are twinning these, of security and development. And I wanted to get any thoughts on just that at a narrative at the narrative elevation about what signals that Beijing is trying to send about, the West has screwed everything up, and we're now taking the lead in driving an innovative new discussion rooted in a shift of multipolarity away from U.S. hegemony, towards a much more small D democratic world. And as a lot of the translations we did indicate, you know, Beijing putting forward that these are our solutions, these are our gifts to the world of how we should think about a more inclusive development ecosystem and a more inclusive security environment rerouted away from a hegemonic, U.S./West.”
Mulakala said they are clearly linked.
“I think maybe you combine the two a little bit. I think for a community, people, local stakeholders, GDI won't resonate unless they see concrete results, they see programs on the ground and faces,” she said. “We did a survey across Asia of BRI projects, 5,000 people, 10 projects, and we asked them, ‘Do you know what the BRI is?‘ And the large majority across six countries in Asia. They don't know what the BRI is. They've never heard of it. They don't even know how their government is involved in it.
“So it's unlikely that they're going to take notice of something called the GDI. What they are going to take notice of is actual project. I think for western northern donors in Asian countries, they will likely be jittery because China is more provocatively entering the development narrative space."
Asunka said Africans have positive feelings about BRI, and that might spill over to GDI, even if people don’t fully understand it.
“That's the way it is. They may never know the impact on their daily lives,” he said. “And so I do think that, as I mentioned earlier, it may be the case that if GDI invests in these soft areas in a way that allows people to really benefit from it, and in so doing, of course, politicians and governments, especially the ruling party is likely to benefit from some of these investments and will adapt and draw the attention.”
The West needs to appreciate the support China is gaining through these efforts, Asunka said.
“The way the West can respond to this, I would hope that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater because there's certainly something relevant about the GDI,” he said. “And the question is how does the West engage with China to ensure that the good things that contain in the GDI actually gets their way into how to grow the global development program, and I hope that will be the case.”
Custer said BRI is still being framed and understood. Its final form and impact is yet to be determined.
“We asked African leaders the same question about what is BRI and they didn't know either. So I would I think that it really does come down to what people's experiences are of Chinese development projects on the ground, no matter how they are packaged or framed,” she said. “I think there's a couple of different ways in which we may see reactions to GDI from countries in the Global South as well as potential competitors in the global north as well as multilaterals.
“I think that one response that you may see is certainly countries in the global south that often feel dictated to by northern donors will find this very refreshing and hope that other donors actually borrow and learn from this,” she said. “But secondly, it's kind of an opportunity, I think, for even the U.S. and European democracies to hold China to account for realizing and living out these values in practice.”