Weaponizing the Belt and Road Initiative

The State Council mandated the Belt and Road Space Information Corridor in 2016 with the goal of using space technology to support the development of the BRI and strengthen participant states’ links to China. Central to this corridor is the Beidou satellite system that is meant to serve as the “digital glue for the roads, railways, ports, and industrial parks” being developed under the BRI flag. Components of the corridor are to include navigation, remote sensing, weather, communication, data-relay satellites, and ground stations and data centers. Applications include but are not limited to disaster relief, port operations, transportation, financial services, agriculture, and urban planning. With the recent completion of the 35-satellite Beidou system, China should be in a position to provide this range of services to all countries along the BRI. As the Beidou system becomes fully operational and more widely utilized, China will be able to reduce BRI partner governments’ dependence on the U.S.-operated global positioning system (GPS) and bring them further under its technological umbrella.

The Belt and Road initiative (BRI), announced by China’s President Xi Jinping in 2013, is a massive international infrastructure program involving nearly 140 countries and 30 international organizations. Xi’s ambitious vision is to construct a network of infrastructure across the world that will facilitate trade, investment, and connectivity with China. The initiative is a loose portfolio of disparate projects, many of which predate the “Belt and Road” brand. The BRI is composed of the land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the sea-based “21st Century Maritime Silk Road.” It encompasses an estimated $1 trillion in infrastructure projects spanning energy, transport, mining, information technology (IT), “smart cities,” and special economic zones (SEZs). Supplementing the original “One Belt, One Road” are now the “Digital Silk Road,” the “Belt and Road Space Information Corridor,” the “Health Silk Road,” and the “Green Belt and Road.” This proliferation of BRI corridors and roads has provided Beijing with an allpurpose vehicle to support its foreign and economic policies and a brand that links the differing streams together under one rubric.

Although the importance of physical infrastructure cannot be overstated, the BRI is much more than a portfolio of terrestrial assets. The initiative’s expansion into the digital and space arenas underscores its all-encompassing nature. In launching the Digital Silk Road and the BRI Space Information Corridor, the provision of Chinese technology and access to Chinese networks provides Beijing the opportunity to enhance digital connectivity in partner states and regions, advance Chinese technological standards, and support China’s rise as a technological power.

Similar concerns have been raised over the BRI’s technology-focused corridors. Certainly, developing economies would benefit from next-generation Chinese technology and systems that help accelerate their integration into the global digital economy. However, what does Beijing gain by providing these technological assets to BRI states? What kind of military and strategic advantages could China amass through the establishment of the Digital Silk Road and BRI Space Information Corridor? Is the BRI a vehicle for creating an expanded Chinese-dominated regional ecosystem that disadvantages the United States and likeminded states militarily as well as commercially? This report undertakes to examine these questions.

China’s rapid military modernization program, the increasing ubiquity and assertiveness of its navy and air force, and its apparently insatiable appetite for ports worldwide have heightened the West’s concern about the BRI’s role in China’s security strategy. Moreover, the expansion of the BRI into space through the launch of the Beidou Satellite Network and into the digital realm through the Digital Silk Road raises further questions about how Beijing may use technological features of the BRI to enhance its influence over recipient states and to gain military advantages. Particular suspicion has accrued to seemingly overbuilt but underutilized ports along important Indian Ocean trade routes that appear more suitable as potential naval bases than as commercial operations.

The expansion of the BRI is not only terrestrial. Cyberspace and outer space constitute two other domains connected by the BRI network. Each of these domains has dual civilian and military utility. And as China’s 2015 white paper on military strategy points out, both are arenas for international strategic competition where China is determined to secure its national interests. Not only is cyberspace a “new pillar of economic and social development”; it is also a new domain of national security. The white paper argues that China must enhance its cyber capabilities to ensure national and information security, stem crises, and maintain stability. The Digital Silk Road – covering cyberspace – and the Belt and Road Space Information Corridor – covering outer space – provide Beijing with additional channels to strengthen its influence and leverage in project host states. Additionally, these newer components of the BRI promote the incorporation of Chinese technological standards and advance key national strategic and defense aims.

This growing space and digital component of BRI has a commercial rationale and offers a number of potential benefits to recipient countries. At the same time, both the Digital Silk Road and the Space Information Corridor, which generate immense streams of big data, directly support the next-generation artificial intelligence technologies that China seeks to dominate. Beijing’s access to and potential control of vast amounts of information have clear military and intelligence implications. The big data harvest from BRI can bolster the Peoples Liberation Army’s (PLA) capabilities in what the military calls C4ISR – Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance. The use of the Beidou Satellite Network removes the PLA’s vulnerability under the U.S.-controlled GPS system. And widespread adoption of Beidou challenges American technological dominance and increases China’s leverage over third countries. Beyond the collection of data or any military advantages, the spread of the Digital Silk Road and the Space Information Corridor systems helps promote Chinese influence, commercial interests, and standards.

Beijing’s nominally commercial BRI investments, particularly in port infrastructure and digital projects, directly facilitate Chian’s transition to a strong maritime power and provide the PLA with strategic assets to support its priorities. Despite its branding as an economic and development initiative, the BRI is in fact the embodiment of a whole-of-government effort to develop the “close coordination between military struggle and political, diplomatic, economic, cultural and legal endeavors” that Xi Jinping has called for to foster a strategic environment conducive to China’s rise. Integrating the civilian and military sectors is a pillar of China’s defense policy strategic framework. It allows China to obtain benefits from national defense resources in peacetime and from civilian infrastructure projects in the event of conflict. Given that Xi Jinping has championed the “unified military-civil system of strategic capability,” it should come as little surprise that major components of BRI infrastructure, including the port[1]park-city model, the Digital Silk Road, and the BRI Space Information Corridor, are designed with dual-use features that bolster a range of potential military and intelligence capabilities.

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