Belt and Road Initiative: Challenging South and Southeast Asia.

Byline: Dr. Muhammad Zulfiqar

The euphoria about the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Indonesia and elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia (SEA) has been felt since 2017, particularly following the country's participation in the BRI Summit in Beijing that year, where Indonesia (along with other SAARC and ASEAN member states) was expected to receive massive investments from China to support several infrastructure projects. This year, the debates concerning the BRI are again becoming prevalent after Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut Binsar Panjaitan as Indonesia's representative signed 28 BRI projects last April. Among the various debated subjects is the growing concern about the real nature of the BRI. Is that a Chinese developmental initiative or a geopolitical instrument that uses debt-trap as a tool to bring targeted countries into the desired terms.

The BRI as Chinese debt trap

In the realisation of the BRI, China is targeted to spend US $ 4.4 trillion (Rp 62.7 thousand trillion) which is divided into various infrastructure projects in 65 countries. The funds from China will be disbursed from three main institutions, namely the Export-Import Bank of China, Belt and Road Initiative: Challenging South and Southeast Asia Dr. Muhammad Zulfiqar the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund. However, the implementation of the BRI caused various kinds of controversy, one of which was related to the fear of a debt trap. Sri Lanka is one of the BRI participating countries that must give up on China's debt.

The Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport (MRIA) project in Sri Lanka which costed US $ 190 million (Rp 2.7 trillion) with an interest of 6.3 percent did not benefit from the airport's operations. As a result, the Sri Lankan government is losing money.

This made the country unable to pay debts to China. The inability to pay credit or interest, at the end of June 2016, led Sri Lanka to make an agreement with China in the form of equity (surrendering land for lease) for 99 years to the country. According to a well-known SAARC strategic analyst based in India, Brahma Chellaney, what China does with its BRI is a debttrap diplomacy effort, where this type of diplomacy is a bilateral relationship that is interwoven on the basis of debt. In its operations, this type of diplomacy involves a creditor country that deliberately extends excessive credit to the debtor country.

If the debtor country cannot fulfil...