My Open Society Foundations are dedicated to protecting human rights, especially for those who don’t have a government defending them. When we started four decades ago, many governments supported our efforts. Unfortunately, their ranks have thinned. The United States and Europe, once our strongest allies, are preoccupied with their own problems now.
Therefore, I want to focus on what I consider the most important question for open societies: what will happen in China?
Only the Chinese people can answer the question. All we can do is to draw a sharp distinction between them and Xi. Since Xi has declared his hostility to open society, the Chinese people become the main source of hope.
And there are, in fact, grounds for hope. As some China specialists have explained to me, there’s a Confucian tradition according to which the emperor’s advisers are expected to speak out when they strongly disagree with one of his actions or decrees, knowing full well that it may result in exile or even execution. This came as a great relief to me when I was on the verge of despair. It means that a new political elite has emerged that is willing to uphold the Confucian tradition, and that Xi will continue to have opponents in China.
THE UNRAVELING SILK ROAD
Xi presents China as a role model for other countries to emulate, but he’s facing criticism abroad as well. His Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been in operation long enough to reveal its deficiencies. For one thing, it was designed to promote the interests of China, not the interests of the recipient countries. Moreover, its ambitious infrastructure projects were financed mainly by loans, not by grants, and foreign officials were often bribed to accept them. And many of these projects have proven to be economically unsound.
The iconic case is in Sri Lanka. China loaned the Sri Lankans the money to pay China to build a port that serves China’s strategic interests. But the port failed to attract sufficient commercial traffic to enable the Sri Lankans to service the debt, enabling China to take possession of the port. There are several similar cases elsewhere, and they are causing resentment.
Malaysia is leading the pushback. The previous government, headed by Najib Razak, sold out to China. But in May 2018, Najib was voted out of office by a coalition led by Mahathir Mohamed. Mahathir’s government immediately stopped several big infrastructure projects being carried out by Chinese companies and is currently negotiating how much Malaysia will still have to pay China.
The situation is not as clear in Pakistan, which has been the largest recipient of Chinese investments. The Pakistani army is fully beholden to China, but the position of Imran Khan, who became prime minister last August, is more ambivalent. At the beginning of 2018, China and Pakistan announced grandiose plans for military cooperation. By the end of the year, Pakistan was in a deep financial crisis. But one thing became evident: China intends to use the BRI for military purposes as well.
All of these setbacks have forced Xi to modify his attitude toward the BRI. In September, he announced that “vanity projects” will be shunned in favor of more carefully conceived initiatives, and in October, the People’s Daily warned that projects should serve the interests of the recipient countries.
Customers are now forewarned, and several of them, ranging from Sierra Leone to Ecuador, are questioning or renegotiating projects. Xi has also stopped talking about “Made in China 2025,” which had been the centerpiece of his self-promotion a year earlier.