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. Take the new Chexim-funded $3.4 billion electric railway set to link the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa with Djibouti, a coastal state on the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a pinch point on the way to the Suez Canal.
Or the dual-purpose deep-sea port and special economic zone under construction on the Black Sea coast at Anaklia.
