China's massive, globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seeks to build everything from railways, ports, and power plants to telecommunications infrastructure and fiber-optic cables. Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy endeavor, BRI has the potential to meet developing countries' needs and spur economic growth, but its implementation creates risks that outweigh its benefits. Unless the United States offers an effective alternative, China could reorient global trade networks, set technical standards that would disadvantage non-Chinese companies, lock countries into carbon-intensive power generation, increase its political influence over countries, and acquire power projection capabilities for its military. The COVID-19 pandemic has made a U.S. response more urgent as the global economic contraction has accelerated the reckoning with BRI-related debt. China's Belt and Road: Implications for the United States proposes that the United States respond to BRI by putting forward an affirmative agenda of its own, drawing on its strengths and coordinating with allies and partners to promote sustainable, secure, and green development.

Infrastructure is essential for development. This report presents a snapshot of the current condition of developing Asia's infrastructure---defined here as transport, power, telecommunications, and water supply and sanitation. It examines how much the region has been investing in infrastructure and what will likely be needed through 2030. Finally, it analyzes the financial and institutional challenges that will shape future infrastructure investment and development.

One of Chinese president Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy programs is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a web of infrastructure development plans designed to increase Eurasian economic integration. Chinese official rhetoric on the BRI focuses on its economic promise and progress, often in altruistic terms: all countries have been invited to board this "express train" to wealth and prosperity. Missing from the rhetoric is much discussion of the initiative's security dimensions and implications. Chinese officials avoid describing the strategic benefits they think the BRI could produce, while also gliding over major security risks and concerns. Yet at the unofficial level, China's security community has paid close attention to these issues, probing in great depth the gains Beijing can expect, the challenges it will face, and the new demands it will have to satisfy. Understanding those Chinese assessments is helpful as the United States considers how, when, and in what capacity to engage the BRI.

China's commercial ties with the outside world have long been symbolized by the ancient Silk Road, which began as a tortuous trading network of mountain paths and sea routes that provided a lifeline for the Chinese economy. Now the leadership in Beijing is reviving the concept with an ambitious plan to build and upgrade highways, railways, ports, and other infrastructure throughout Asia and Europe designed to enrich the economies of China and some 60 of its nearby trading partners. The so-called Belt and Road Initiative has generated enthusiasm and high hopes but also skepticism and wariness. And as big as China's ambitions are, many obstacles stand in the way. In this volume of essays edited by Sean Miner and Simeon Djankov, PIIE experts analyze the initiative's opportunities for China and the world, along with the logistical problems and political, economic, and security implications that have generated concerns.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), officially unveiled in 2013, is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign and economic policy initiative to achieve improved connectivity, regional cooperation, and economic development on a trans-continental scale. This book reviews the evolving BRI vision and offers a benefit-risk assessment of the BRI’s economic and geopolitical implications from the perspective of Asian stakeholder countries, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Among the value added of the book is first an online perception survey of opinion leaders from Asian participating countries on various aspects of the initiative. To our best knowledge, the survey is the first of its kind. Second, the book presents the simulation results of a computable general equilibrium model of the world economy to estimate the potential macroeconomic impacts of the BRI as a whole and those of its constituent overland and maritime economic corridors. Third, the book makes ten key evidence-based policy recommendations on how to enhance the prospect of a successful and mutually beneficial BRI 2.0 to both China and stakeholder countries.

What does the biggest geopolitical project of our time tell us about China's global ambitions?