China’s New Silk Road
Xi calls it the “project of the century,” a decades-long drive to grease the wheels of trade with massive infrastructure spending; Morgan Stanley estimates it will total $1.3 trillion by 2027. The Belt and Road is at the core of China’s foreign policy strategy and was even added to the Communist Party constitution in 2017. The growing web of trade routes extends into at least 76 countries, with typical plans including a new deep-sea port in Myanmar, power lines in the Maldives and a dam in Pakistan.
