China’s Belt And Road Initiative: Grand Or Grandiose?

China’s Belt and Road Initiative was first announced five years ago in 2013. Broadly speaking, the grand plans is for a grand set of transportation connections from China across Asia, and reaching to Africa and Europe. Some of the connections would be overland (the “belt”) and others would be overseas (the “belt”). Chinese banks and investment funds would provide substantial finance for these projects, and Chinese firms–many with considerable experience building infrastructure in China– would carry out a substantial chunk of the work.

The timeline for a massive set of infrastructure investments that could affect 80 countries and two-thirds of the world’s population is appropriately measured in decades, not in a few years. Still, five years after the main announcement is a reasonable time to review the record. Jonathan Hillman offers one perspective in “China’s Belt and Road Is Full of Holes” written as a Policy Brief for the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS, September 2018). For additional detail, the Economist conomist 

In evaluating the Belt and Road Initiative, the first step it to recognize that there is no list of what projects included, or not included. As Hillman writes: “The BRI is also breathtakingly ambiguous. There is no official definition for what qualifies as a BRI project. There are Chinese-funded projects in countries not participating in the BRI that share many of the same characteristics. The BRI was officially launched in 2013, but projects started years earlier are often counted. The BRI brand has been extended to fashion shows, art exhibits, marathons, domestic flights, dentistry, and other unrelated activities. The BRI’s loose, ever-expanding nature, and a lack of project transparency, have led many observers to exaggerate its size. When assessing the BRI, there is always a risk of imposing order where, by design, it does not exist.”