Does China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) Provide the Conditions for Solidarity and Delinking?

In this blog post Yue Zhou (Joe) Lin, a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol, reflects on the discussions that took place at last year’s International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE) annual conference. Yue Zhou’s detailed analysis looks at how the Belt Road Initiative’s ongoing transformation and BRICS nations are changing the Global Order. He also addresses how Global South countries could escape the grasp of imperialism through delinking and promoting transnational solidarity. 

“In today’s capitalist world, filled with dangerous geopolitical contests, it may appear that the doomsday clock is quickly ticking. Our human civilisations are being tested more than ever before – how then, can we cooperate to overcome global challenges in this ever-changing world?”

Yue Zhou (Joe) Lin

On 17 October 2023, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)’s third forum was held to mark its 10th anniversary. The event brought together 155 countries representing three-quarters of the world’s population and over half of the world’s GDP. Alongside the BRI, there are three other Global Initiatives that have come to define China’s vision of a reformed world order. The first of the three—the Global Development Initiative (GDI)—was announced in 2021.

Then in response to the geopolitical instability across almost all continents, Xi further launched the Global Security Initiative (CSI) in 2022 which has been described as a ‘concrete manifestation’ of ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy’ in Simon Curtis and Ian Klaus’s book, The Belt and Road City: Geopolitics, Urbanization, and China’s Search for a New International Order. In 2023, Xi proposed the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) advocating for respect for the diversity of civilisations. 

These actions highlight China’s role in reshaping the Global Order. However, in today’s capitalist world, filled with dangerous geopolitical contests, it may appear that the doomsday clock is quickly ticking. Our human civilisations are being tested more than ever before – how then, can we cooperate to overcome global challenges in this ever-changing world? And does the BRI provide the conditions for delinking from the current world’s economic system and building solidarity? 

An opportunity to address these questions came at the 14th International Conference of The International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy (IIPPE), held in Istanbul, Turkey, from the 4 to 7 of September 2024. 

IIPPE Theme: The Changing World Economy and Today’s Imperialism

Based on the theme – “The Changing World Economy and Today’s Imperialism”, the conference featured one roundtable on Palestine and five workshops, including the session I was involved in, ‘The rise of China and its Implications for the World’ (sponsor: IIPPE’s Political Economy of China’s Development Working Group). 

Two plenary sessions were held by Utsa Patnaik, from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, and Trevor Ngwane, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Among those sessions, China has come under fire, along with other members of the recently expanding BRICS coalition. As elaborated in a blog post by economist Michael Roberts, IIPPE 2024: Imperialism, China, and BRICS+, the renowned Marxist economist, Professor Ngwane was keen to tell his audience that socialists should not rely on the BRICS and its expanding institutions to resist the hegemony of the imperialist bloc led by the US. However, such positionality surrounding China or the other BRICS+ nations is not unexpected.

China, BRICS+, and the Left

Among the radical left, primarily outside of China, the dominant political narrative characterises China and now increasingly the BRICS+ nations as forms of state capitalism, (neo-)imperialism, or at the very least sub-imperialism. A typical example is political economist Patrick Bond’s 2014 article, BRICS and the tendency to sub-imperialism published by the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM). A “sub-imperialist” state exerts incredible power over the sovereignty of other states within its regions, while its own development is subjugated to the interests of more dominant imperial powers or an imperialist bloc. The “sub-imperialist” term was first introduced by Brazilian economist and sociologist, Ruy Mauro Marini in 1965 to describe the Brazilian dictatorship’s role in the Western Hemisphere. During the 1970s, the term was then widely applied to Washington’s outsourcing of geopolitical policing responsibilities and economic opportunities to regional allies.

What has raised concern among the left is the recent expansion of the BRICS alongside the deepening development of the BRI. At the 15th BRICS Summit in 2023, the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the BRICS group would open its membership to Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). However, the November 2023 Argentine general election, which brought Javier Milei, a right-wing libertarian to power, did lead to Argentina’s eventual full withdrawal from BRICS membership. While Saudi Arabia has delayed its membership, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE have all joined the BRICS, which has exemplified the increasing traction of the BRICS+ bloc. The BRICS+ expansion is said to be part of a plan to build a competing multipolar world order that empowers Global South countries to challenge the Western-dominated world order. 

On 24 October 2024, the BRICS bloc further invited thirteen “partner countries” – Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Among them Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam became partner countries of BRICS. Then, on 6 January 2025, after 16 years of hesitation, Indonesia joined BRICS as a full member. That same week, Nigeria also joined BRICS as a partner country. As of 6 March 2025, there are now 10 BRICS full member nations and 9 partner nations.

Is this an imperial expansion? There are no simple answers. The radical left would argue that the only force for change would actually be driven by the working class citizens, rather than from BRICS bureaucracies themselves. At the meeting, Michael Roberts accepted this, though rejected Ngwane’s characterisation of China as being capitalist, imperialist and all BRICS+ members as being “sub-imperialists”.

The call for bottom-up activism against global capitalism is based upon the presumption that the working class has been dependent on BRICS leaders. However, even this presumption of dependency is highly contested. What I observe is the continued mobilisation of workers and the radical critique of China and other BRICS members from the left despite the fact that at a material level, workers and self-proclaimed revolutionaries still struggle to build transnational solidarity to fight against the Far-right. 

Transcending the Capitalist-Socialist Binary

There is a case to be made about moving beyond the capitalist-socialist binary when considering China and BRICS+. 

Firstly, labelling all existing polities as being capitalist and imperialist does not necessarily encourage collective action, since when one confronts too many enemies one confronts no enemy. To maintain a sense of purpose and sustain momentum for social resistance, we must establish priorities for a prolonged struggle and war of position. For us, the primary contradiction lies in the antagonism between the Global South and Western imperialism. So, it’s important that when we discuss the Global South, we do not exclude BRICS+ members. While some of the BRICS+ bureaucracies may have supported  capitalistic or imperialistic agendas, this should not overshadow their role within the broader struggle to the wider resistance to Western imperialism.

Secondly, as social mobility decreases, precarity accelerates, and technological advancement moves forward rapidly, we — as activists, scholars, and workers — must inevitably accept or even welcome the ever-changing nature of the working class. Class is never a fixed identity but rather a dynamic organism capable of rearticulating its own identity in every epoch. Class formation is fluid, which I stressed in my 2022 article, ‘Gramsci, the Relativity of the Integral State-Society, and the COVID-19 Interregnum’ for Critical Sociology. In it, I illustrate how we define the working class fundamentally, and how that directly shapes our understanding of what bottom-up activism from workers actually looks like. 

Another layer of complexity arises from the issue of (left) intellectuals. As a self-reflective Gramscian-Marxist scholar, I remain vigilant and mindful of the tendency for armchair Marxists and socialists to form academic insular cliques. 

China as the Exploited or the Exploiter?

I am concerned with the lack of conviction for a candid and thorough assessment. For example, Utsa Prabhat Patnaik, the prominent Marxist Indian economist, at IPPEE, dismissed China’s decades of poverty alleviation efforts by claiming that China had not succeeded in lifting 800 million Chinese people out of poverty, as measured by nutritional intake. According to this criterion, Patnaik claims that China is just as impoverished as India and, by extension, just as capitalist.

In my opinion, Patnaik may have overlooked China’s criteria for measuring poverty levels, which are based on well-being categories such as food, clothing, education, medical support, and safe housing, and when comparing poverty in China and India, the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) presents results that contradict Patnaik’s conclusion. The PIP offers a far more comprehensive view of global, regional, and country-level trends for 170 world economies, incorporating the UN’s Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). The MPI consists of three dimensions of poverty, namely Health (nutrition and child mortality), Education (years of schooling and school attendance), and Standard of Living (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, and assets). Notably, the weight of each MPI indicator leans heavily towards health and education.

Another widely recognised measure from the PIP is Extreme Poverty, defined as living below the International Poverty Line of $US 2.15 per day, based on the 2017 prices (adjusted for inflation and for cost-of-living between countries). This measure relates to income measured after taxes and benefits, or to consumption, per capita. When comparing the share and number of people living in extreme poverty (Figure 1), China outperforms India in both rural and urban areas. 

Figure 1

The same result is reflected when comparing between extreme monetary poverty and multidimensional poverty, the hidden hunger index to the share in extreme poverty, 2012, and share in extreme poverty versus life expectancy, 2023.

However, the issue is not about comparing China and India in a contest of poverty reduction. The real question is whether we should simply reject the World Bank’s measure based on the premise that the World Bank is a global capitalist institution. I believe the left should not dismiss international poverty measures. Relying solely on nutritional intake as the sole indicator is problematic, and it would be inappropriate to overlook China’s remarkable achievements in poverty alleviation, as measured by PIP (Poverty International Poverty) metrics.

The bigger concern is inequality, and whether one considers China a capitalist or socialist state. China’s GINI coefficient (after tax) was 0.44. The Gini coefficient measures inequality on a scale from 0 (absolutely equal) to 1 (absolutely unequal). However, perhaps a more rigorous way of determining whether China and other BRICS+ members are sub-imperialist is to follow the Exploitation Index (EI) developed by Jonathan F Cogliano, Roberto Veneziani, and Naoki Yoshihara in their 2024 article, The dynamics of international exploitation for Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. As the authors explain, the exploitation index has robust theoretical foundations related to the “New Interpretation” of Marx. Other scholars such as Gérard Duménil, Duncan Foley, and Dominique Lévy identify in A Note on the Formal Treatment of Exploitation in a Model with Heterogeneous Labor, that workers in a given economy, are exploited at the aggregate level and across different types of labour if the share of the national income they receive is lower than the share of labour they perform. Cogliano’s team extended this intuition to the international context and to individual countries. 

Based on the Exploitation Index, China is on the cusp between being exploited and exploiting. Therefore, Michael Roberts concluded in his IIPPE 2024: Imperialism, China and BRICS+ blog that “China does not fit the bill, at least economically” on the measures of “imperialist exploitation”. 

Several sessions on China at the IIPPE conference painted a more nuanced picture, going beyond the simple binary choice of whether China is either capitalistic or socialistic. 

The BRI’s Role in Delinking

Transcending the binary was also the aim of my panel – “IIPPE China 5 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Tween Years and Beyond” (see slides), which pivoted on the question of whether the BRI provides conditions for ‘delinking’. This concept was first introduced by Samir Amin, widely known to be one of the most influential Marxian economists, political scientists, and world-systems analysts. In Amin’s 1985 work, La déconnexion, pour sortir du système mondial (and its 1990 translation, Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World), ‘delinking’ refers to the process of “subjecting the mutual relations between the various nations and regions of the whole of the planet to the varying imperatives of their internal development” in response to Eurocentric global capitalism. Although the term has been redefined and reinterpreted by Amin and his contemporaries in various contexts, its spirit aligns with Michael Rober’s perspective on the conference theme (see IIPPE 2024: Imperialism, China and BRICS+): the need for the Global South countries to escape the grip of imperialism. The key question is whether this can be achieved by the BRI, the three Global Initiatives, and the emerging and disparate coalition of BRICS+ governments.

Delinking does not necessarily advocate for autarky, which is a situation of complete disengagement with international trade. Nor is it disengagement with capital or even capitalism itself. The past decade of BRI development has so far been characterised by initial integration followed by disentanglement. 

Alongside the BRI, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has also been coordinating with other multilateral institutions, adhering to the World Bank’s standards for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) approaches to better manage environmental and social risks, and to improve development outcomes. The BRI’s enterprise projects and ventures continue to struggle between pursuing “emancipatory” funding (free of oppressive social, political, and economic conditions) with the practical need to adapt to existing norms. This has lead to compromises that align the BRI with the practices of Western donors and investors. Nevertheless, the AIIB and the BRI still do offer an incremental approach that involves a system of credit and development aid that is quite distinct from Western or mainstream finance channels. Therefore, the endeavors of the BRI can still be viewed as a type of delinking that makes the fulfillment of a fair and equal multipolar world more possible.

Perhaps, the ultimate challenge for the BRI is to delink and disentangle itself from neoliberal globalisation where extractivism continues to be a dominant process. It appears that China’s State-owned enterprises (e.g., Sinohydro, a hydropower engineering and construction company) operate on a growth model driven by the increase of privately captured land value. This model has reinforced spatial and structural inequalities while promoting neoliberal tendencies. Political Economist, Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente’s 2019 paper – Make development great again? Accumulation regimes, spaces of sovereign exception and the elite development argues that the BRI’s State-coordinated Investment Partnerships (SCIPs) still advances and normalises ‘resource-backed development.’ 

De-extractivisation and De-neoliberalisation

China should rightly be held accountable for those issues. However, compared to the West, China has granted much more bargaining power to the many recipient members of the BRI. This shows a commitment to cooperation in navigating sensitive sociopolitical issues. If we take Amin’s 1985 definition of delinking seriously, then our mission should involve sharing the responsibility of escaping out of extractivist cycles with the support of China. Amin explicitly argues that delinking can not be achieved  through a “unilateral adjustment of the weakest to the strong”. This means that the BRI should provide a platform for a co-ordinated strategy of de-extractivisation and de-neoliberalisation, rather than simply dismissing China’s BRI and it’s role within the BRICS+. That is the call that I made in my panel presentation – BRI’s Strategic Recalibration Towards Delinking: Identifying and Confronting Extractivism.

The delinking process from neoliberal globalisation and global capitalism requires the utmost trust and patience. In China’s case, we should expect to see a co-existing but particularly acute contradiction, between capitalist accumulation for profit, and socialist accumulation for planned investment in order to achieve market-free social goals. China’s incremental and gradual integration into the global supply chain has made it more exposed to neoliberal globalisation, resulting in increased capitalist accumulation. To prevent China from following in Japan’s path, where capitalist accumulation prevails, delinking must incorporate de-neoliberalisation. 

Fostering a Culture of Epistemic Delinking

According to Amin, progressive movements and national governments in the Global South must delink (or detach) from the chains of imperialism and establish more self-reliant forms of economic and political development. This also means to delink from Western/European institutionalisation of knowledge, education, and culture. This involves relentless exercises of awareness and practices “to change the terms and not just the content of the conversation”, as Argentinian philosopher and semiotician, Walter D. Mignolo emphasised in his 2007 paper, Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality.

In her panel presentation, Yangguang Chen, a Professor of Education from China – Resisting Neoliberalisation in Global Knowledge Capitalism: How should China’s Outward-oriented Higher Education (OHE), shared some scholarly recommendations in the form of agendas and policies for China’s OHE, both before and during the BRI period. These recommendations highlighted not only the influence of neoliberal influence but also colonial remnants. Chen specialises in education policy, and is based at Goldsmiths University in London. So far, the BRI has pressed China’s OHEs forward in three dimensions: (1) founding and expansion of cultural institutions such as Confucius Institutes, (2) establishing of university branch campuses in Global South countries, and (3) increasing the intake of international students in Global South countries to Chinese universities. 

Epistemic delinking must guide the deepening development of these efforts and encourage broader  collaboration. The question is: on what terms and conditions can this be achieved? Chen calls for mutual learning between China and other countries within the Global South, particularly when it comes to confronting the neoliberalisation of higher education through decolonisation. China and the BRI must take stock of the multifaceted meaning of decolonisation as outlined in historian and decolonial/postcolonial theorist, Sableo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s 2021 Third World Quarterly paper where he summarises the ten “Ds” of the “decolonial turn”. Such an understanding of decolonisation is profound, Chen argues, as it offers a framework not just in the African context but beyond and across the Global South.

Promoting Genuine Solidarity

The comprehensive worldview to consider was the one introduced by the Kenyan author and academic, Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his 2012 book, Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing (The Wellek Library Lectures) defines Globalectics as follows:

‘On its surface, there is no centre; any point is equally a centre. As for the internal centre of the globe, all points on the surface are equidistant to it—like the spokes of a bicycle wheel that meet at the hub. Globalectics combines the global and the dialectical to describe a mutually affecting dialogue, or multi-logue, in the phenomena of nature and nurture in a global space that is rapidly transcending that of the artificially bounded, as nation and region. The global is that which human in spaceships or on the international space station see: the dialectical is the internal dynamics that they do not see. Globalectics embraces wholeness, interconnectedness, equality of potentiality of parts, tension, and motion. It is a way of thinking and relating to the world, particularly in the era of globalism and globalisation.’

Within this worldview, the BRI’s commitment to advancing people-to-people and cultural exchanges is part of broader vision of building a Community of Common Destiny for (Hu)mankind (人类命运共同体) and a New Form of Human Civilisation (人类文明新形态). The vision extends beyond China to encompass the broader Global South, where mutual contributions and genuine solidarity among BRI members is crucial for achieving a transdimensional delinking from neoliberal globalisation. This is all unfolding against the backdrop of neoliberalism’s decline and the rise of figures like Trump, often associated with neo-fascist tendencies. In my opinion, the BRI, the Three Global Initiatives, and the ongoing BRICS+ enlargement could provide the foundations for solidarity and meaningful delinking.

---

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are solely those of the blog post author. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Global Souths Hub and/or any/all contributors to this site.