New BRI phase set to boost Macao's intl role

During the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, held in Beijing on Oct 17 and 18, President Xi Jinping announced eight major steps that China will take to support high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.

I am optimistic that the new phase of the Belt and Road Initiative will boost Macao's role on the international stage as a business-service platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.

The forum was attended by 151 countries, or about 78 percent of the 193 member states of the United Nations, 41 international organizations and some 10,000 representatives from all over the world. I am sure that no other country in the world has ever been able to host, on its own initiative, that many nations and international organizations at a single event.

As of August, 155 countries have participated in the BRI. I wonder if any analyst forecast the rapid expansion of the initiative when President Xi announced it during a visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013.

The BRI marked the 10th anniversary of its founding about a month before last week's forum. There also were two other anniversaries of particular relevance to the People's Republic of China and the Macao Special Administrative Region this month: the Mainland and Macao Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, which gradually liberalized trade between the two sides, was signed on Oct 18, 2003, and the first ministerial-level Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking Countries (also known as Forum Macao) was held in Macao from Oct 12 to 14, 2003.

The setting up of Forum Macao, which is slated to hold its sixth ministerial-level meeting next year, has immensely elevated Macao's position on the international stage and provided a tremendous boost to its role as a business-service platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. Thanks to Forum Macao, the city has become a relatively important tool of the country's foreign and economic policies.

Addressing the 20th anniversary of Forum Macao on Oct 20, Macao Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng described the 10-nation organization, set up at the central authorities' initiative, as "an invisible bridge across the oceans that closely connects Portuguese-speaking countries and that has gradually become a 'promoter' for comprehensive cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries".

Macao's platform role has turned from just a concept two decades ago into reality and, at the same time, "has significantly enhanced Macao's international standing, assisted the appropriately diversified development of Macao's economy and provided Macao enterprises with a broader space for cooperation", he said.

Forum Macao's future activities should be closely aligned with Xi's eight steps for the next phase of the BRI. In other words, Forum Macao should become an integral part of the BRI, the world's most successful initiative of its kind.

Regrettably, the BRI continues to be maligned by many politicians and commentators in the West. I presume this is based on the all-too-typical cocktail of ignorance and arrogance, as well as the misguided fear and even envy of a rising China.

Unlike in the Global North (with a few exceptions such as Portugal and Serbia), the China-proposed BRI has been almost unanimously welcomed by the developing Global South, Africa in particular.

British sociologist Martin Albrow, noted for his work on globalization, has written a thought-provoking article with the headline "Belt and Road Initiative and China's 'relational power'".

"Relational power" has been defined as "a country's power by how it is able to put its material power into action by developing connections with other countries".

Albrow underlined that the BRI's extension to nearly 75 percent of the countries of the world and half of the world's population inhabiting the 11 countries of the newly expanded BRICS grouping shows the growing influence of China in world affairs.

"But this is not hard power, and I would not even call it soft power. It is something else. Let us call it relational power, the ease with which you can communicate with another, initiate contact, find what is in your mutual interests, exchange goods and services, and discover what you have in common," Albrow wrote.

Albrow, author of the 2018 book China's Role in a Shared Human Future, emphasized in his article that "relational power … means the capacity to work with others. It is cooperation for greater ends than any can achieve individually."

One can only hope that "relational power" will play an increasingly important role in international relations. The international community would surely benefit from it.

According to Albrow, "China has an approach to world affairs that is deeply embedded in its own history. Not for nothing has Chinese thought over the centuries designated the unity of our world with the concept tianxia, (or) 'all under heaven'."

The ancient concept is of dramatically renewed significance during this global age for all of us — here in Macao and elsewhere in our troubled world.

What mankind urgently needs is to commit itself to establishing a community with a shared future. The BRI can certainly play a constructive role in this endeavor.

The author is director of The Macau Post Daily.