LAUSR

Much ink has been spilled about China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), President Xi Jinping’s grand vision for leveraging China’s growing wealth to expand economic, political, and military influence. The initiative is typically defined as encompassing projects in some 65 countries across three continents, and in sum it represents the greatest directed investment in history with an estimated value of over $1 trillion over the lifetime of the initiative. But five years in, Xi’s “project of the century” is facing turbulence – from indications that China’s economy is slowing, routine construction and project management delays, and most interestingly efforts on the part of recipient countries to assert greater control over the direction of China’s efforts.