RESEARCH BRIEF China Belt and Road Initiative How revival of the silk road could impact world trade In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced domestic product (GDP) of around US$21 trillion plans to build a Silk Road Economic Belt and that it is set to encompass. a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which have The Silk Road Economic Belt connects China, come to be known as the Belt and Road Initiative Central Asia, Russia and Europe, and the 21st (BRI). The BRI is geared towards encouraging Century Maritime Silk Road runs along China’s policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, coast towards Europe in one direction and from investment and trade cooperation, financial China’s coast, cutting through the South China Sea integration, cultural exchange and regional and the South Pacific, in the other. The overland cooperation between Asia, Europe and Africa by path will leverage existing international transport creating jointly built trade routes emulating the routes and key economic industrial parks as ancient Silk Road. The colossal scale of the BRI is springboards for cooperation, while the sea route exemplified by the 4.4 billion people (70 per cent aims to build transport routes bridging major sea of the world population) and the cumulative gross ports across the BRI. 2 Figure 1 Map of BRI regions and projects Source: Mercator Institute for China Studies. (C.Inton, 24/03/2017. Reuters) Main research question: Key findings understanding the impact of Qualitative research suggests that multimodal improving multimodal transport transport infrastructure and connectivity is key to connectivity on multilateral trade and boosting international trade and economic growth economic growth in countries and More specifically: regions across the BRI • Good transport infrastructure reduces This project aimed to gather evidence to transport costs and transport times and understand and quantify the potential impact improves delivery reliability. Empirical evidence of the BRI investment on multilateral trade and shows that cost of transport, in both time economic growth. The research team undertook and money, has a significant impact on trade both qualitative and quantitative analyses flows. Good transport infrastructure facilitates consisting of desk research, literature review and trade expansion. econometric modelling. • Efficient transport infrastructure facilitates This is a proof-of-concept study which is industrialisation and also enables more targeted at stimulating discussion and providing efficient regional and global production empirical evidence on the impact of transport networks. This results in more employment, infrastructure improvements in the BRI region. The positively affecting industries and sectors. study’s findings aim to be of use to policymakers • Better transport infrastructure enables regions and stakeholders who are interested in this to be well connected and supports regional infrastructure plan. economic integration. 3 • Better transport infrastructure can lower the development of a preliminary gravity model transport and trade costs, accelerate industrial (Anderson and van Wincoop 2003, 2004). agglomeration, increase labour productivity The model development uses readily verifiable and foster development and regional and data from publicly accessible sources, such as national welfare. the World Bank and United Nations. A series of We identify key facilitators of and barriers to indices are defined to measure the quality of transport connectivity to facilitate multilateral transport infrastructure including rail, road and trade in the general BRI context. Many barriers airport densities, maritime logistics performance could become facilitators, if resolved. The barriers and the World Bank logistics performance index and facilitators are broadly classified into two (LPI). To measure transport connectivity, bilateral types: physical and soft. distances between countries by rail, aviation and maritime transport are used, which provide a proxy Physical barriers could include inadequate for transport costs by each mode. capacity of infrastructure and equipment, speed and cost of transporting goods or topographical The models provide essential input for factors such as deserts or mountainous examination of a set of policy scenarios. Using regions. Soft barriers could include legal and ongoing BRI project information, we simulate regulatory barriers, project financing and security, a series of policy scenarios and examine the (inhospitable) terrain and security surrounding impact of improving transport connectivity and trade routes. We also discuss the role of infrastructure within the BRI region and in the technology in facilitating supply-chain resilience wider study area. and resource efficiency. From the quantitative analysis we find that: Overall, the BRI promises to boost trade and • There is a large variation in the quantity and economic growth but several barriers will need to quality of transport infrastructure in the BRI be overcome. region. On average, the region suffers from Quantitative research reveals that improving having less developed transport infrastructure transport infrastructure across the BRI will result and connectivity compared to other regions in a win-win situation for trade, both for the BRI (EU and elsewhere), which hampers trade region and areas further afield development. As of 2013, the airport density (number of airports per 1,000 km2) in the BRI In the second stage, we develop an econometric region was nearly one-sixth that of the EU and model to quantify the impact of improving one-third those of the other economic entities transport connectivity on multilateral trade included in the study. In the same time period, between areas covered by the BRI and the rest railway density (per km2) in the BRI region was of the world. The study area comprises 65 BRI one-fifth that of the EU. countries (up to 2016), 28 European Union (EU) countries and over 40 other countries that • The econometric model analysis finds a are directly or indirectly affected by the BRI. statistically significant positive association Because of a lack of data, we are restricted to between transport connectivity and bilateral Figure 2 Barriers to and facilitators of transport connectivity and trade related to the BRI Security Capacity of Speed and Topographical Legal and Project Information around the infrastructure cost factors regulatory financing technology routes TRANSPORT AND TRADE 4 trade. More specifically, in the BRI region, the streamlined across the BRI’s overland and existence of a rail connection between trading maritime corridors in order to reduce trade partners is associated with a large impact on friction. Creating clear security arrangements and improving trade, e.g. improving total exports mechanisms to ensure the safety and security by 2.8 per cent in the BRI region, including of goods travelling across the BRI can also help the wider region. We also find that a 10 per protect investments. Advancements in information cent reduction in air and maritime distance and digital technology and automation can help increases trade by 0.4 per cent and 0.1 per improve multimodal transport connectivity by cent, respectively. Moreover, improvements creating digital and information-sharing networks, in road density by 10 per cent would increase collaborative platforms and opportunities to trade by 0.34 per cent. In addition, transport improve efficiency and supply-chain resilience. service quality is found to have an important Further, there could be substantial benefits if impact on bilateral trade. countries and regions across the BRI coordinate • Our statistical analysis suggests that, with their development plans to achieve compatibility the proposed level of investment in transport and complementarity between policies and infrastructure in the BRI region, total trade infrastructure implementations. Countries should volumes could increase not only in the BRI work together to ensure the initiative delivers region, but also in areas outside the initiative sustained economic, social and environmental (such as the EU). Improving transport benefits. infrastructure in the region would appear to present a win-win scenario in terms of the References impact on trade. Anderson, J. and E. van Wincoop. 2003. ‘Gravity Recommendations with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle.’ American Economic Review 93(1): 170–92. Our analysis finds that the area covered by ———. 2004. ‘Trade Costs.’ Journal of Economic the BRI suffers from having less developed Literature 42(3): 691–751. infrastructure than other regions and that this hampers trade. Therefore, investing in trade- and transport-related infrastructure such as ports, Acknowledgement airports and road and rail links should remain a This study was made possible by a generous gift priority and sufficient funding should be made from the Cyrus Chung Ying Tang Foundation. available for this purpose. Through this gift, the RAND Center for Asia Pacific In addition to improving ‘physical’ transport Policy (CAPP) established the Tang Institute for infrastructure and connectivity, ‘soft’ barriers US-China Relations in 2007, within which this will need to be overcome. Legal and regulatory research was conducted. inconsistencies need to be addressed and This summary describes work done by RAND Europe documented in China Belt and Road Initiative: Measuring the impact of improving transport connectivity on international trade in the region – a proof-of-concept study