Radical transparency is democracy’s secret weapon to counter China 

Excerpt

Authoritarian regimes, like China, fundamentally depend upon opacity for their engagement with the global economy. Opacity provides the perfect cover for bribes, illicit finance, and corruption, while shielding government officials from public scrutiny over suspect arrangements. As shown in our new report on China’s Belt and Road Initiative,Tightening the Belt or End of the Road?, China’s insistence on comprehensive opacity allowed Chinese and local officials to hide a host of bad decisions, weak planning, poor risk management and corruption. If America and its allies want to get serious about countering China’s economic and political coercion, we need to be committed to leveraging one of democracy’s greatest strengths: transparency. 

China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), was supposed to unleash infrastructure and investment across emerging markets, building ports and power plants, while building China’s influence across the Global South.  Instead, as a direct result of its comprehensive opacity, the BRI is in trouble across its global footprint. Big-ticket projects with unrealistic cost and revenue projections have led to massive debts in borrowing countries, pushing dozens of nations into debt distress. BRI corruption scandals have erupted across the Initiative and poor-quality builds and poor planning have led to dams with thousands of cracks and schools with faulty foundations.   

Unnecessary projects used to boost local political support proliferated, with airports having more elephants visiting the tarmac than international flights and massive highways primarily seeing foot and bicycle traffic. Not surprisingly, the BRI has failed to deliver a reputational dividend to China, with public opinion of Beijing actually falling in many BRI countries. 

Elaine Dezenski is senior director and head of the Center on Economic And financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Joshua Birenbaum is deputy director of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.