A China Wins Twice Proposition: The Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

China’s dazzling infrastructure and energy driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a $1 trillion investment across Eurasia and beyond, has lost its shine. Increasingly, China’s leveraging of the initiative is being perceived by recipients and critics alike as a geopolitical power play, a tool to shape a new world order populated by autocrats and authoritarians, and characterized by intrusive surveillance, a potential debt trap, and a self-serving way to address domestic overcapacity.