"DEBT DIPLOMACY" OR "COMMON DEVELOPMENT": AN ANALYSIS OF THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE

President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping announced the “New Silk Road” (later renamed the Belt and Road Initiative -BRI) in his speech at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan on September 7, 2013. Nearly 140 countries have joined the BRI since then. Various political and academic criticisms have begun to be made against China and the BRI, especially in the West. In 2017, the term “debt trap diplomacy” was used for the first time by Brahma Chellaney against the BRI and China. Some Western politicians and academia supported Chellaney, who said that China expanded its sovereignty over these countries, especially in Asia and Africa, through large loans that it could not repay to countries through the KGI, and there were objections from important organizations such as Chatham House and Lowy Institute. The criticism of “debt trap diplomacy” generally focuses mainly on Chinese investments in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Central Asia and Africa. The biggest fact that the critics miss, who say that China especially chooses countries with small economies and problems in repayment of loans, is that most of these countries are mainly indebted to the “international market” dominated by the West. When the debts of the countries in East Asia and Africa are examined closely, it is seen that there is no deliberate action to justify China's “debt diplomacy” strategy. In a report published by the Center for Global Studies in March 2018, it examined 68 countries with the CSR component and foreign debt-strapped countries, and concluded that instead of confiscating the state assets of these countries, China restructured debts or wrote off debt. This clearly contradicts the 'debt trap diplomacy' thesis. Contrary to the “debt trap diplomacy” black propaganda; with the investments of China, it has created employment for thousands of people with high quality infrastructure projects in many countries in Asia and Africa, and technology transfer has been made to the countries. In terms of interstate relations, the principles of “sharing together”, “common development”, “and non-interference in internal relations”, “respect for mutual sovereignty” and “win-win principle” are determined as the basis of the new international order, under favor of BRI. Keywords: Belt and Road Initiative, debt trap diplomacy, China, shared development, common development, win-win principle