Effects of China's New Silk Road on the Participating Economies

After two decades of rapid economic growth, based on export and foreign investments inflow, a major shift in the economic strategy of China was made in 2001. A set of basic principles was called Go Global. The focus shifted from exports as a driver of economic growth, to domestic consumption, and from FDI inflow to FDI outflow due to the need to place surplus capital. Go Global strategy has transformed China from a participant to one of the main promoters of globalization. Although the 2013 New Silk Road was presented as a new global project, it was actually just a new name (brand) for the basic principles adopted under the Go Global strategy. China had started intensive economic and diplomatic activity long before it was launched. The New Silk Road has only given shape to the part of China's development strategy for the 21st century that refers to foreign policy and economic relations with foreign countries. Today, the New Silk Road or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as it was later called, is the most dynamic and unique segment of the globalization process. After two decades of setting up and starting the implementation of the new China`s development strategy, there is enough information for providing an initial assessment of its effects. The assessment of costs and benefits of the countries along the New Silk Road corridors is the main subject of the book. The analysis of these topics has the form of a regional approach, and it is divided in four chapters related to: Central Asia, South Asia, Middle East and Balkan. Within each region, the scope and sectoral distribution of Chinese FDI are analyzed, and the compliance of FDI with the needs of the domestic economy, i.e. their development potential, is assessed. The effects of the BRI are not only visible in the case of investments, but China's economic penetration into a certain area also brings significant changes in the field of foreign trade of the host country. The next topic refers to the attitudes of the dominant powers in the analyzed regions towards China's economic penetration into the area they consider their zone of interest. Russia, India and European Union have taken very different views on Chinese influence in their neighborhood, so their responses vary significantly.