Development beyond aid: Utilizing comparative advantage in the belt and road initiative to achieve win-win

Abstract

Against the backdrop of anti-globalization rhetoric, this paper summarizes our joint book entitled Going Beyond Aid (Lin and Wang, 2017a) and discusses the prospects for development finance in the broad context of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Based on the New Structural Economics (Lin, 2010;, here we focus on China's demonstrated comparative advantages in infrastructure, e.g. in hydropower and high-speed railways (HSR). In addition, long-term orientation (LTO) and patient capital are latent comparative advantages that many Asian economies possess, and are critical for the Belt and Road Initiative. Only if these comparative advantages are utilized can these economies cooperate to potentially achieve win-win.

Does China's Overseas Lending Favor the One Belt One Road Countries?

“…Du & Zhang, 2018;Herrero & Xu, 2017;Hurley et al, 2019;Li et al, 2019). Furthermore, there are only narrative descriptions rather than statistical evidences discussing China's loans and grants to OBOR countries (Bräutigam, 2011;Cheng, 2016;Kynge, 2015;Lin & Wang, 2017;Yu, 2017). Our work fills the gap and establishes a causal relationship of the policy impact on China's outbound loans.…”

Making the BRI more inclusive

“…This horizontal south-south flow of resources will give a new direction to economic globalisation and complement the previous vertical north-south cycle, enrich globalisation, and help to balance global trade. There will be more high-quality goods and technical exports from developed countries, creating a win-win global situation (Lin and Wang, 2017).…”

Poland – A Gate to the EU or a Bottleneck in the Belt and Road Initiative

“…The Initiative will connect Asia with Europe and Africa through corridors, land bridges, maritime bridgeheads and a net of dedicated power plants (Seele, Jia and Helbing, 2019). The BRI acts as a great magnet attracting countries thanks to a win-win concept offering participating countries fruitful development cooperation thanks to the Chinese patient capital located in the BRI countries (Lin and Wang, 2017). This vision strongly influences the Central and Eastern European countries wishing to bridge the development gap between them and Western European countries (Voinescu and Moisoiu, 2019).…”