Does Brexit Influence China’s “One Belt One Road” Initiative?

Abstract

In 2015, China officially launched its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to mobilise new decade-long growth forces at home and abroad. The new Silk Road Economic Belt and the twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road are expected to connect China with countries in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Europe and Africa. So far, 68 countries have signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with China aiming to benefit from the BRI. The UK is not among these countries, but several projects in trade and transportation, finance and energy are being implemented and planned under the umbrella of the BRI. The British government claims to be a “natural partner” of China and has consequently welcomed the BRI as a stimulus to intensify UK-China relations. The goals of the paper are twofold. First, it aims to describe the current status of the four BRI projects in the UK, which are the Yiwu-London freight train route, the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, the development of a new business district on the grounds of the London Royal Albert Dock and the use of the City of London as a top-tier financial centre for financing BRI projects. Second, the paper discusses plausible arguments on how Brexit may affect these projects directly in the UK or indirectly in the EU27.