Illustration: Britt Spencer
It is the first great development project of the 21st century and maybe the greatest of all time. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is ambitious, expensive and, in its own way, collaborative.
A project slated to cost anything up to $8 trillion has so far been astonishingly good at corralling financing and galvanizing support from many of the 71 countries along its dual route – an overland ‘belt’ linking China with Europe and a maritime ‘road’ snaking through the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.
Sovereigns short of quality infrastructure have borrowed heavily from the likes of Export-Import Bank of China (Chexim) and China Development Bank (CDB), Beijing’s development-banking double-act, while global investment banks work day and night to earn generous fees by channelling funding into anything bearing a ‘BRI’ tag.
Some of these projects are hugely valuable.
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