“Belt and Road will bring us significant benefits,
but we need some time to see it,” said Ding.
Still, Belt and Road faces hurdles that might trip
up hopes for boosting Chinese exports.
Governments including Thailand, Tanzania,
Sri Lanka and Nepal have scaled back or
renegotiated projects they said were too costly
or gave too little work to local contractors.
Ansteel’s experiences reflect the potential volatility
of exports based on the ebb and flow of Chinese-
led construction projects. It reported 2018 exports
of 5.8 billion RMB ($840 million), or about 5.5% of
its total revenue, down by 10% from 2017.
Developing countries need industrial equipment
but cannot replace U.S. demand for consumer
goods, said economist Zhu Zhenxin at the Rushi
Financial Institute in Beijing.
The northeast also is targeted in a multi-year
government effort to shrink the bloated state-
owned steel industry in hopes of making
producers more efficient and profitable.
Liaoning closed 18 steel mills and eliminated 6
million tons of production capacity in 2016.
Policies aimed at reviving the northeast were
unveiled by Beijing in 2003, but the region is
struggling with pollution and an aging population.
In 2016, Liaoning’s economy shrank by 2.5%.
Its output was less than one-third that of
Guangdong province, the manufacturing
powerhouse that abuts Hong Kong.
The total population of Liaoning and the two
other provinces in China’s northeast — Jilin
and Heilongjiang — declined by 380,000 people
last year as migrants left for other regions in
search of work.