Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at the under-investigated case of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia to assess whether new partnerships in investment and productive cooperation would enable virtuous links between private interests and public mandates for sustainable and inclusive long-term growth.

Paper long abstract:

The ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ (SREB) - part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – was launched in 2013 promising to revive the economic connectivity epitomised by the Silk Road. Although reports have tried to document the BRI’s dynamics, evidence on its dynamics and impacts is still very anecdotal and contradictory. In the last years, under the BRI umbrella, China and Uzbekistan strengthened their economic cooperation by signing over 100 agreements worth around 20 billion USD on infrastructure, energy and manufacturing. Uzbekistan has become one of the major beneficiaries of the BRI, and China is its primary trade partner. Uzbekistan is Central Asia’s most populous country; it has recently adopted an outward-looking strategy after years of autarky; it is also landlocked, so Chinese-built road and rail links to ports could be especially transformative. However, there are also fears that the BRI is nothing more than China's new 'debt-trap' diplomacy in relation to developing countries. Secondary data are limited and scattered and do not allow disaggregation by sectors, so we have very limited knowledge of the BRI. This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of how BRI-related projects and investments operate on the ground. Combining the literature on state capitalism and GVCs/GPNs, and complementing secondary data and unstructured interviews, it investigates whether it enables virtuous links between private interests and public mandates for inclusive growth. FInally, it will reflect on the national social and economic risks attached to the BRI financial and productive flows.