China’s Belt and Road Is a Campaign, Not a Conspiracy
That’s why its signature global initiative is looking frenzied and chaotic, like many Chinese domestic policies.
A Chinese site engineer in working in Sri Lanka.
Photographer: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Strategists in the West fear that China’s Belt and Road initiative is a vast, well-laid and finely orchestrated plan to extend Chinese hegemony over much of the developing world. They should be afraid of something else: It’s nothing of the sort.
What many outsiders have missed is that the Belt and Road is a vision, not a plan. When Chinese President Xi Jinping laid out the scheme five years ago, he proposed an ambitious transcontinental effort to link the economies of some 80 countries, covering two-thirds of the world’s population, through improved trade and transportation links. How to translate Xi’s vision into concrete deals was left to other parties, both within and beyond the Chinese government.