Where next for China’s Belt and Road?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2023
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Xi Jinping announced a massive building project along the ‘New Silk Road’ to very little fanfare in Kazakhstan 10 years ago this month.
Infrastructure including railways, roads and ports have been built in 165 countries to date, as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Billions of dollars has been lent to countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America.
Some are now struggling to afford the payments and China is reducing the amount being loaned.
We look at what this means for Beijing’s finances and for countries with huge projects underway, but with no means of meeting the repayments.
Presenter: Ed Butler Producer: Hannah Bewley Additional reporting: Michael Kaloki
(Picture: Xi Jinping waits for a photo call at the China-Central Asia Summit in Xian, China in May 2023: Credit: Florence Lo/Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I had this secret. I robbed banks in my spare time. Lives less ordinary from the BBC World |
| 0:08.9 | Service. This is not a good thing to do because police are after you. Find out more at the end of this |
| 0:16.4 | podcast. Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Coming up in today's show, |
| 0:25.7 | it's 10 years since the launch of China's famous Belt and Road Initiative, a network of trains, |
| 0:32.3 | ports, roads aimed at revolutionizing global trade. Not like the Chinese saying goes. |
| 0:38.1 | If you want to get rich, you got to build the road first. |
| 0:40.6 | They called it the New Silk Road, connecting east and west. |
| 0:44.4 | But has this investment gravy train hit the buffers? |
| 0:47.8 | China is shifting from maybe bankrolling new infrastructure projects to bailing out the old |
| 0:53.7 | infrastructure projects. |
| 0:55.2 | A report card for the Belton Road, business daily from the BBC. |
| 1:02.7 | We should take an innovative approach and jointly build an economic belt along the Silk Road. |
| 1:13.0 | This is where it all began. |
| 1:15.7 | China's president, Xi Jinping, addressing a hushed auditorium in Kazakhstan in September 2013. |
| 1:22.5 | It was the launch of what he called a new Silk Road connecting China to Western markets, just like the trade |
| 1:29.3 | routes of ancient times. |
| 1:31.2 | A near neighbor is better than a distant relative. |
| 1:37.3 | China and Central Asian countries are friendly neighbors. |
| 1:41.7 | So what exactly was the plan? |
| 1:44.5 | And for that matter, are we all still friends? |
| 1:47.4 | Juliette Liu is a political ecologist and China scholar, |
| 1:50.4 | based at the University of British Columbia. |
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