China this week celebrated the 10th anniversary of the launch of its Belt and Road initiative.
Originally designed to better integrate China with its neighbors and more distant trading partners, it has evolved into a much more ambitious project. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature initiative, BRI, is now a pillar of an alternative global order, a counter to the existing, Western-created and led paradigm.
That idea is popular among participating nations, but the initiative has been criticized for prioritizing China’s needs over those of its partners, burdening them with unsustainable debts and helping Chinese companies more than those of recipient nations, all of which Beijing denies.