Last year there was a palpable sense that China’s much-hyped One Belt, One Road Initiative had gone off the proverbial rails. The whole venture seemed poorly planned and not driven by a cohesive strategy, while concerns about corruption also ran high.

Worried that his signature foreign policy program was falling apart, Chinese President Xi Jinping stepped in and vowed to terminate spending on so-called “vanity projects.” He launched a crackdown on corruption by deploying the same widely-feared auditors he used in his anti-graft campaign at home.