Analyzing the Truth about China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Partnership or Debt Trap?

Abstract

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), formerly known as One Belt One Road Initiative, is China’s and President Xi Jinping’s ambitious policy that globally fosters infrastructure and economic development in an effort to create a trade network with African and European countries with China as the central hub. Founded in 2013, the BRI has historically sought out third-world and developing nations that are abandoned by the West and offered loans to fund infrastructure and economic stimulus projects. However, out of a number of successful projects, a few failed economic ventures in BRI countries resulted in the third world perspective of the BRI inaccurately shifting from mutually beneficial to predatory debt-trap diplomacy. In reality, there is no evidence of China purposely bankrupting BRI countries in order to achieve a secret military or neo - colonial agenda and in fact, China has been a net economic benefit to the majority of BRI countries. This paper will disprove the “debt-trap narrative”, argue for the benefits of the BRI, and recommend that in order to overcome this perceived predatory perspective of the BRI, China needs to be clearer about their interests in BRI countries and reshape the adversarial debtor-collector relationships that they approach BRI countries with.