China’s New Silk Road

The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s effort to spread its exports and influence.

• The Silk Road was a network of trade routes first built during China’s Han Dynasty in the third century BCE that connected China with the Middle East and Europe.
• The routes altered not only the course of global trade, but connected people and cultures, leaving an indelible mark on world history. Today, there’s a lot of talk about China’s “new silk road.”
• The Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, is a network of land corridors, shipping lanes, and multi-trillion dollar infrastructure projects intended to help China export to much of the world.
• Leaders of Western liberal democracies, however, are concerned it’s not just Chinese goods that Beijing wishes to export, but the regime’s authoritarian worldview and influence.
• In an effort to counteract the BRI, Europe and the United States have announced international infrastructure projects of their own.
• This all means that, behind the construction of things like bridges and power plants across much of the globe, a quiet ideological clash is now unfolding.