China’s vast foreign investment program comes at a sharp cost to human rights and good governance, analysts Richard Fontaine and Daniel Kliman write for Foreign Policy.
Beijing frames its engagement with the developing world as one of “noninterference,” a riposte to what Beijing sees as the ideologically driven Western donor model promoting democratic governance and human rights, adds Shanthi Kalathil, director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy.
China’s government has been using the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to push the notion that economic growth without political liberalization or accountability is not only possible, but advantageous. Through means subtle and strategic, China has reshaped the arena of development assistance, she writes in a post based on the article, “China in Xi’s ‘New Era’: Redefining Development” that appears in the April 2018 issue of the Journal of Democracy.
