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Why You Should Pay More Attention to China’s Global Development Initiative 

by Eric Olander
A still of President Xi Jinping promoting the GDI in an address to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June. Image via CGTN.

When President Xi Jinping announced China’s Global Development Initiative (GDI) in September, the response among Western observers was muted.  

Not so in China, where scholars see the GDI and its sibling, the Global Security Initiative, as the new step in China’s global influence. Beyond development assistance, the GDI opens the field of development itself as a new front in a global struggle between Chinese and Western discourse power. 

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