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by Jamie McIntyre
| April 17, 2018 1

They call it China’s new Silk Road.

Like the ancient system of trade routes that dates back to the Han dynasty more than 2,000 years ago, China’s five-year-old “Belt and Road Initiative” has the potential to put Beijing in the driver’s seat for decades to come, while keeping its weaker competitors under its thumb.

“At its core, it is a proposal for putting China at the center of the global economy, and doing that through building infrastructure and through negotiating trade agreements,” said Jonathan Hillman, director of the Reconnecting Asia Project, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s a very expansive vision for connectivity, for really moving China into the center of everything.”
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China’s Belt and Road Initiative was unveiled in 2013, when it was called “One Belt, One Road,” (“belt” for land routes and “road” for sea routes). It was a massive infrastructure funding project, in which China would underwrite billions of dollars in improvement on the Eurasian continent and spark a new golden age of commerce.

The brainchild of Chinese President Xi Jinping is ostensibly a win-win for all involved. China’s overcapacity in construction (it has seven of the 10 largest construction companies in the world) would be matched with countries' unmet infrastructure needs.

And China would lend poorer countries the money.