Category: Belt and Road
China’s New, Slimmed-Down Belt & Road Initiative
China's critics contend the Belt and Road Initiative is dead or dying due to a mix of gross mismanagement and hubris. The data, however, reveals a very different story. While lending has definitely decreased considerably from its peak in 2016, the ...
10 Years and a Trillion Dollars Later, the BRI Turns Green
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) crossed a number of critical milestones in the first half of the year that seem to demonstrate President Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy initiative is still going strong despite concerns over debt sustainability. 102 deals ...
China and Pakistan Sign Deals to Expand Key BRI Cooperation
China and Pakistan signed a raft of new agreements aimed at moving forward their China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key Belt and Road Initiative project. China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shebaz Sharif and its Minister for Planning and Development, Ahsan Iqbal, signed six deals and ...
Xi Meets With Indonesia’s Jokowi in Summer Diplomacy Sprint
Chinese President Xi Jinping took advantage of the World University Games now underway in the southwestern province of Sichuan to meet with visiting Asian and African leaders, most notably Indonesia's Joko Widodo -- also known as Jokowi. The Indonesian president's ...
U.S. South America and Caribbean Commander Raises Alarm About China’s Influence
Gen. Laura Richardson, the head of the U.S. Army’s Southern Command, which oversees Central and South America, and the Caribbean, says China is enlarging its presence in the Western hemisphere. In a football metaphor-strewn interview with Newsweek, Richardson said: "They're on ...
Did China Intervene in a Pakistani Election? Controversy Reveals Beijing’s Economic Centrality
A revealing war of words has erupted between Pakistan’s current ruling party and its predecessor touching on China’s political influence. On the ten-year anniversary of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a massive Belt and Road Initiative project incorporating transport logistics, industrial zones and ...
Reflecting On China-Cambodia’s Dara Sakor Project, 15 Years In
It was 2008 when the Cambodian government appointed the Chinese-owned Union Development Group (UDG), a subsidiary of Wanlong Group based in Tianjin, to build a $3.8 billion mega project in Dara Sakor. UDG was equipped with a 99-year lease and was ...
“Whining is Not Competing,” Says Top DC Foreign Policy Scholar in Response to Biden’s BRI Remarks
U.S. President Joe Biden's latest criticism of China's Belt and Road Initiative as a "debt and confiscation program" triggered an intense debate in Washington's foreign policy community over whether it was merited. Soon after the President made the remarks during a ...
UBS Analyst Provides Upbeat Forecast on the Belt and Road, Challenging Skeptics Who’ve Already Written the BRI’s Obituary
If your media diet is predominantly from Western, Japanese or Indian sources, then it's quite likely you've seen one of the countless obituaries this year for China's Belt and Road Initiative. The narrative in articles like Foreign Policy's "China’s Belt ...
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki Kicks Off Four-Day Visit to China, Meeting With Xi Set For This Week
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Monday, the first day of a near-week-long state visit to Beijing. This is the President's first visit to China since 2006 and his first since Eritrea joined the Belt and Road ...
What’s in Store for Chinese Companies Encouraged to Invest in Equatorial Guinea?
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, recently urged Chinese companies to invest in Equatorial Guinea and expressed that the Chinese market is open to receiving more products from the African nation. After meeting his Equatorial Guinea counterpart, Simeon ...
Africa’s Role in China’s Evolving Geopolitical Priorities
It's been a momentous past two weeks for Chinese foreign policy with major a breakthrough in the Sri Lanka debt impasse and the landmark announcement that Beijing helped to broker the restoration of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Meantime, China ...