The challenges of China’s new global investment strategy

‘One Belt, One Road', or yidai yilu in Chinese, is on everyone’s lips these days. The ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy initiative. First announced in 2013, the land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt” and its maritime twin, the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” are ambitious plans aimed at placing China at the heart of regional trade networks and restoring it to a prominent geopolitical position in Asia.

But there are a number of imposing challenges facing the initiative. Michal Meidan, associate fellow at Chatham House and Luke Patey, senior researcher at DIIS, argue that China’s Belt and Road Initiative remains a grandiose and abstract wish list rather than a coherent blueprint of interconnected international investments. In this new policy brief, they forward that once the Belt and Road is set into motion many of the infrastructure projects will encounter financial uncertainties as well as political and security risks.