申論題

   Launched in 2013 as “one belt, one road”, this initiative involves China underwriting billions of dollars of infrastructure investment in countries along the old Silk Road linking it with Europe. The ambition is immense. China is spending roughly $150bn a year in the 68 countries that have signed up to the scheme. The summit meeting (called a forum) has attracted the largest number of foreign dignitaries to Beijing since the Olympic Games in 2008. Yet few European leaders are showing up. For the most part they have ignored the implications of China’s initiative. What are those implications and is the West right to be sanguine? The suspicion that the project will fail could be misguided, considering an unquenchable thirst for infrastructure in many developing Asian nations in particular.