Paw Tracker newsletter (Week of Dec 6)

This week, the successful closure of the Padma Bridge’s steel girders in Bangladesh supplies ammunition to Chinese diplomats and think tankers who urged a more proactive effort to fight back international doomsayers. The idea that the BRI is derailed by the pandemic should be refuted with actual progress of key projects, not just words, they claim. But if China wants to grab the driver’s seat in shaping global narratives about the BRI, one area it definitely needs to catch up is statistics. Recent data out of Boston University depicts a picture of curtailed lending and a BRI in retreat.

This week's highlight projects

Bangladesh: Construction of the Padma Bridge reached key milestone

The Padma bridge that will connect Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka with 21 southern districts saw its steel girder officially closed on Dec 10. 

Built by China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group, the bridge is one of the highlights of the BRI in Bangladesh. According to the official website of BRI, after completion, the multipurpose bridge will shorten the travel time across the Padma River from 7-8 hours by ferry to just 10 minutes, benefitting 80 million people and boosting Bangladesh’s GDP “by 1.5%”.

Construction of the bridge was hit hard by the pandemic this year due to the shortage of labor force, making it an early indication that the BRI might be severely affected by lockdown measures around the world. The successful closure is therefore celebrated as a sign that the initiative is recovering from COVID-19. Completion date is now expected in June 2022, pushed back one year from an earlier deadline.

Nevertheless, Bangladesh media has expressed concern that the delay may further increase the cost of the bridge, which has been adjusted upward several times since its 2003 feasibility study. The World Bank pulled funding from the project in 2012 over corruption allegations. Bangladesh has since decided to finance the bridge on its own.

Cambodia: Exim Bank finances new phase of rural grid expansion

China’s Exim Bank will provide a new round of concessional lending to finance Cambodia’s power grid expansion in the rural areas, according to reports from the Chinese media. The reports did not reveal the exact amount of the lending.

The new arrangement will cover 2970 kilometers of grid expansion, on top of the 8384 kilometers of transmission facilities the bank has already financed, the majority of which are in rural Cambodia.

Other project & corporate updates
 

Argentina: Country’s largest wind project connected to the grid

According to the official website of Power China, the Miramar wind farm, consisting of 29 turbines, successfully started commercial operation at the end of November. 

The wind farm is part of the Helios wind power project, branded the country’s largest wind project, which consists of a cluster of wind farms. According to Power China, the Miramar wind farm, located near Buenos Aires, has a total capacity of 98.6MW. Other wind farms in the Helios cluster include four farms (Loma Blanca I, II, III & VI) in the Patagonian region of Chubut.

Gezhouba: Company bagged 950MW of renewable energy contracts 

Gezhouba Group, a Chinese energy construction and engineering company that is now a subsidiary of CEEC, announced that it has recently won 2 new contracts to build 950MW of renewable energy projects. 

The EPC deals include Vietnam’s Sóc Trăng 4 wind energy project (350MV) and Mexico’s Tiguana and Nogales solar power plants (120+480 MW). The Vietnam deal follows closely the company’s recent winning of the contract to build the 350MW Cà Mau offshore wind project, highlighting the responsiveness of Chinese engineering companies to the tide of new renewable energy demands from developing country markets. The recent dominance of Chinese companies in Myanmar’s solar tender reportedly took the country’s energy regulators by surprise.

Indonesia: China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation enter the biomass co-burning sector

On Dec 9 China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation signed an EPC deal for a gas and biomass co-firing power plant. The contract is worth USD 34 million and includes the construction of a factory that will produce 60,000 tons of biomass pellets per year.

Biomass co-burning at gas and coal fired power plants has been gaining traction in Indonesia in recent years and is seen as a “greener” option to solely burning fossil fuels. It is also a sector that Japanese companies have proactively expanded into. Earlier this year Mitsubishi signed an initial agreement with Indonesian power distributor PLN to plan a “roadmap” of biomass co-burning at thermal power plants in the country.

Talk of the Town

“China is on the right side of history,” Yue Yucheng, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, told participants of a think tank gathering in Beijing on Dec 5. In the keynote address, Yue made a rare, open refutation of the claim that Chinese diplomacy had become too aggressive and fight-picking. He challenged the idea that China was breaking global rules and disrupting world order: “In this world, who is the one pushing unilateralism and hegemonism, and who is the one tearing up multilateral treaties?” he questioned. The attack on China’s diplomacy style, now better known as “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy”, is an attempt to “shut China up”, he said.