China's "One Belt, One Road" (OBOR) strategy signals a global infrastructure spending spree worth an estimated $1 trillion, but it ignores a crucial factor: namely, that China has a patchy record of delivering efficient projects both at home and abroad.
Research at Oxford University's Said Business School into large infrastructure projects delivered in China found that over half were poorly managed, featuring cost overruns, lack of real economic benefit in the areas where the projects are built and little in the way of returns to investors. Tellingly for the OBOR strategy's prospects, the findings from this research concur with objections to infrastructure project delivery in many of the countries being targeted in China's OBOR strategy, such as Nigeria, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia.
In most cases, China's overseas infrastructure forays stress the geopolitical value of the projects, rather than their economic value. China's drive to build its political influence in Africa and Asia through infrastructure has resulted in faulty power plants in Botswana and loss-making railway projects in Laos.
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