BRI (Belt and Road initiative) is the world’s biggest project. The Belt and Road initiative was first announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. It is a globe-spanning plan to strengthen trade, infrastructure, and investment links between China and an estimated 65 other countries.
The `road’ actually refers to a maritime silk road network of shipping lanes running from China through the southeast, Africa, and to Europe. The ‘Belt’ on the other hand, refers to overland routes stretching through central Asia to Europe. The most visible part of the belt and Road so far has been infrastructure across the world. The Belt and Road have meant billions of dollars in investment from the Chinese. In Sri Lanka, about 200 million dollars of Chinese funding went into the country’s second international airport. After all that investment, though, it’s been dubbed the world’s emptiest international airport.
There are many infrastructure projects involving railways, roads, and bridges from Africa to Asia but that is just one part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative project. It is also serving as a huge marketing campaign for Chinese money looking for investment. Yet despite the public nature of the belt and road, there is a lot about a huge plan that we don’t know about. The number of countries estimated to be in this initiative is between 60 to 115. The money committed in this project is between one trillion dollars to 8 trillion dollars.
The belt Road initiative project will be made up of six economic corridors which are the following;
- 1) China Mongolia-Russia economic corridor
- 2) China-central Asia-west Asia economic corridor
- 3) Bangladesh-India Myanmar economic corridor
- 4) CPEC-china Pakistan economic corridor
- 5) Eurasia land bridge economic corridor
- 6) China-Indochina economic corridor
Among them, the only corridor connected to just one country is CPEC-china Pakistan economic corridor. Gwadar port is seen as the buckle in the Belt. This corridor would link Kashgar to Pakistan’s port city of Gwadar. This is an important trading route for China. Particularly because of the country’s location between China and its energy suppliers in Africa and the Middle east.
It has been said that it is the debt trap diplomacy of China that involves the Belt and Road initiative. The Washington-based center for global development raised serious concerns about four states which are Pakistan, Maldives, Djibouti, and Mongolia receiving the Belt and Road financing are at debt risk. It looks like it has a winning hand for China, like when it took control of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port after the country couldn’t make repayment. It is still yet to leave to see what’s next for China’s ambitious program.
Attaullah Baloch
The writer studies political science
The writer studies political science