Explainer | What China’s Belt and Road Initiative has in store for coming decade as priorities evolve

Gone may be the days when huge infrastructure projects left partner countries holding a big bill and facing environmental implications

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In Uganda’s mountainous eastern region, the Namagumba-Budadiri-Nalugugu Road (pictured) will be paved with asphalt by a Chinese construction firm. Photo: Handout

Published: 10:00am, 13 Sep 2024

The Belt and Road Initiative, an ongoing effort to link economies into a China-centred trade network, largely via Chinese-backed megaprojects abroad, has entered a phase that Beijing says involves “small but beautiful” additions.

As the plan to grow global trade approaches its 11th anniversary, the ambitious undertaking is expected to shift away from massive projects that have sometimes been accused of resulting in large debt piles or environmental damage in other countries.

Here are four points of interest and importance for the initiative in the coming decade:

1. High-priority countries

China has present or past agreements with 152 countries to pursue belt and road projects. Belt and road work could eventually cost Beijing US$1 trillion to US$8 trillion over an unspecified period, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank estimated in 2018.

Today, 44 of those countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, more than in any other region.

Over the next decade, China might shift its focus to Central and Southeast Asia, said Jayant Menon, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Central Asian projects help fortify China’s trade links to Europe because of the largely landlocked region’s geography, he explained.

Landlocked countries “can become land-linked”, President Xi Jinping said last year at the Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.