Part of the reason why the BRI continues to evoke such mixed sentiments is because the plan has never been all that well-defined
(File)Workers walk at the construction site of East Coast Rail Link (ECRL), a Chinese-invested railway project part of the Beijing 'Belt and Road Initiative', in Bentong, Malaysia. Image: Reuters/ Hasnoor Hussain
This year, we celebrate—or castigate, depending on your point of view—the decadal anniversary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). At its birth, it was christened “One Belt, One Road” (a name it retains in Mandarin), but the term conjured up images of the Middle Kingdom imposing its centrality onto the rest of the world, which led to a hurried rebranding. Public relations aside, however, the BRI continues to provoke equal measures of approbation and concern.