Transcription of the video
Oh, China, bless your heart. You had such high hopes for your “Project of the Century,” the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
But now, it seems not everyone is buying into the dream, especially after Brazil, just like India, recently gave it a polite thumbs-down. It seems China’s global love story is looking more like a soap opera.
But will you believe it if I told you US lead China into a BRI trap? U heard that right—US let China make the blunder. We will explain how.
Hello everyone welcome to Resonant News
Nearly a decade in, and BRI was going to be a grand gesture—billions in loans, roads, dams, ports—all gifts with a charmingly high interest rate attached.
Yes, the BRI was supposed to be a smooth highway straight to the hearts (and pockets) of 140 countries. But with COVID-19, an economic slowdown at home, and partner nations drowning in debt, China is finding that playing the generous lender doesn’t always go as planned.
Take Sri Lanka, for instance: a cozy little island nation now drowning under debt from projects that didn’t exactly turn into cash cows. For example Hambantota port.
And who can forget Pakistan, where locals have taken to the streets and terrorist groups are going boom-boom, in a less-than-cheery response to the BRI’s hefty price tag on their port project in balochistan?
Apparently, BRI-backed roads and dams have been doing more than just carrying vehicles and generating power—they’re also fueling international resentment. Debt-stricken Zambia, for example, is tussling with China for a debt restructuring plan that seems just out of reach. Meanwhile, China’s great Nepali airport project can’t quite seem to attract tourists, likely to the disappointment of everyone involved. India added to Nepal and China’s woes by not letting Nepal get new air routes over India’s air space. So now China can not bring tourists to Nepal via Tibet. Just so you know, not even under normal circumstance airlines fly over Tibet.
So what went wrong?
If people assumed USA would let China replace it as a global power, then we got it wrong. US let China invest far and wide. Meanhwile the American think tanks kept crying that Chinese projects were going to turn out to be debt traps.
US agencies, let China invest in diff countries, and then stifled the projects. For example—in Pakistan, as China increased its investments, US pulled back and China was forced to bear the burden of Pakistan’s shrinking economy. Pakistan’s army known to gobble up every friendly nation, managed to rope China into its business of terrorism. It didn’t take long for China to realize it had shot itself in the foot.
Probably American agencies realized it long ago that massive BRI project will crumble under it own weight. China’s conditions for building BRI projects which were originally meant to trap the host country ended up trapping China itself.
One of the conditions China put forward was—to let Chinese workers work on China funded projects. This earned china the ire of locals—be it in Pakistan or in Africa. Countries which happily accepted being part of debt trap called BRI—they faced America’s wrath. Bangladesh and Myanmar are two good examples. The Bangladesh- Mynamar- China economic corridor is now in shambles as Myanmar is facing a civil war and bangladesh’s new govt is pro-America.
So what US agencies did was—let China invest in projects, while forcing regime change in the host country that will block the entire project funded by China. This ensured that China’s money remained trapped and forced China to invest more into the loss mking entities. This is exactly what is happening to China’s CPEC project in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Western countries, bless their hearts too, are scrambling to offer alternatives, planning to invest a hopeful $600 billion by 2027. But let’s be real—they’re barely keeping up with the grandiosity of China’s original plans. So, here we are: China has pulled back, humbly shrinking its ambitions and throwing emergency loans at debt-burdened nations. Smaller projects, softer rhetoric, and a lot of recalibration—a far cry from the original “Belt and Road to World Domination” vibe.
It’s a fascinating pivot. Maybe a little humility is what the project needed all along, but let’s just say the “project of the century” is looking more like a 10-year headache for Beijing.
yesterday Brazil follows in India’s footsteps, becomes second BRICS country to reject BRI.
Nearly a decade after its inception, momentum behind China’s sweeping Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) appears to be slowing as lending slumps and projects stall—forcing Chinese President Xi Jinping to again rethink a floundering initiative that he once hailed as his “project of the century.”
After doling out hundreds of billions of dollars, experts say China’s lending for BRI projects has plummeted, largely a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s own economic slowdown. Support has also waned as partner countries drown in debt and fractures emerge—literally—in projects, fueling uncertainty about the future of the sprawling initiative.
Xi launched the BRI in 2013 as an ambitious infrastructure development campaign that would span more than 140 countries and export China’s industrial overcapacity, boosting China’s diplomatic clout and enhancing its global influence.
China’s lending had already slipped before COVID-19 hit, a trend that was accelerated by the pandemic’s fallout and then China’s own economic slowdown. For many countries, taking on Chinese loans also quickly became unsustainable—particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove up prices in the global marketplace—stoking backlash against Beijing’s lending habits.
One of the most glaring examples is Sri Lanka, which defaulted on a mountain of debt last year as it grappled with a spiraling economic crisis.
In Pakistan, which owes nearly one-third of its foreign debt to China, protests have erupted around a major port project. And in recent weeks, debt-laden Zambia has been tensely wrangling a restructuring plan with China, its biggest bilateral creditor.
Cambodia: China’s ‘Belt and Road’ Dam is a Rights Disaster. And in Nepal China invested in an aairport which doesn’t get tourirsts. India added to China and Nepal’s woes by not allowing additional routes for aircraft to fly through the airspace of India
In an effort to contest China’s expanding influence through the BRI, many Western nations have been scrambling to offer up their own alternative development initiatives—with little success. By 2027, the United States and G-7 aim to funnel some $600 billion into their Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment—a revamp of the Build Back Better World campaign that they unveiled in 2021.
Beijing now appears to be recalibrating its approach, softening its rhetoric around the BRI’s capabilities, focusing on smaller projects, and shifting course to offering debt-ridden countries emergency loans.
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