Belt and Road Economics
China's trillion-dollar global infrastructure initiative — its economic logic, its debts, and its geopolitical implications.
The World's Largest Infrastructure Project
Launched by Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the most ambitious international economic project since the Marshall Plan. By 2023, China had signed BRI cooperation agreements with over 150 countries and committed an estimated $1 trillion in infrastructure financing: ports in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, railways in East Africa and Southeast Asia, power plants across Central Asia, highways through the Balkans, and 5G networks in dozens of developing countries.
The economic logic was multi-layered. Chinese construction and heavy industry companies gained overseas contracts as domestic infrastructure spending matured. Excess industrial capacity — steel, cement, construction equipment — found export markets. Chinese banks deployed capital abroad as domestic returns diminished. And the infrastructure created trade corridors that connected to Chinese manufacturing and export networks.