China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived. Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the vast collection of development and investment initiatives was originally devised to link East Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure. In the decade since, the project has expanded to Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, significantly broadening China’s economic and political influence. Some analysts see the project as an unsettling extension of China’s rising power, and as the costs of many of the projects have skyrocketed, opposition has grown in some countries. Meanwhile, the United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion. President Joe Biden has maintained his predecessors’ skeptical stance towards Beijing’s actions, but Washington has struggled to offer participating governments a more appealing economic vision. This episode has been researched by our friend and podcast editor James! Check out his channel here https://youtube.com/@DrivenMental?si=-vuxq0l_Bi6L-FYS sources: https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/10/why-china-rebooting-belt-and-road-initiative https://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/belt-and-road https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/09/what-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-bri https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep25409.4 https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/10/17/how-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-is-changing https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/12/05/how-has-china-s-belt-and-road-initiative-impacted-southeast-asian-countries-pub-91170 https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Sri-Lanka-s-China-debt-trap-fears-grow-as-Beijing-keeps-investing https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/15/the-belt-and-road-initiative-is-a-corruption-bonanza/ https://www.npr.org/2023/07/25/1189913291/debt-and-lawsuits-are-piling-up-around-chinas-railway-project-in-malaysia https://thediplomat.com/2023/12/the-belt-and-road-initiatives-impact-depends-on-the-recipient-country/ https://jamestown.org/program/ten-years-on-how-is-the-belt-and-road-initiative-faring-in-indonesia/ https://africacenter.org/spotlight/implications-for-africa-china-one-belt-one-road-strategy/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/31/chinese-built-railway-line-cut-nairobi-national-park-kenya https://www.cfr.org/blog/belt-and-road-initiative-forcing-europe-reckon-china Travel to Germany with me https://trovatrip.com/trip/europe/germany-and-austria/germany-with-steven-bell-nov-2024 Travel to Peru with me https://trovatrip.com/trip/south-america/peru/peru-with-steven-bell-jul-2024 Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stakuyi Subscribe to my channels and let me know what more you would like to see. We organize games through discord: https://discord.gg/BJsRA6UpXx Twitch https://twitch.tv/stakuyi Podcast: https://historyofeverythingpodcast.com/