Understand the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in a regional country-by-country guide from Asia, Malaysia, and the Forest City to Africa, Egypt, and the New Cairo.
China Heralds A New Global Economy.
Just as China was at the heart of the ancient Silk Road, a contemporary globalization for the modern era will be created that reflects its position as the economic centre and future of the world.
The Belt and Road Initiative will be the manifestation of the Chinese Dream and Chinese Century that it will come to define.
The Belt and Road will transform the rest of the world by solving its infrastructural, trading, logistical, and technological deficits. The economic future dynamism is Asia and increasingly Africa. Latin America and Europe will also benefit too.
The BRI is open to all (with already at least 139 countries representing 70% of the global population participating) and about bringing the world together under a shared heritage and vision where cooperation and interdependence are fundamental. There are distinct elements of ancient philosophy in the form of tiān xià (天下) and Taoism in its nature therefore.
By building a transportation network of roads, railways, and ports, as well as catalysing early industrialising manufacturing bases and exporting Chinese advanced technological innovation, the long-latent entrepreneurial economic potential of the rest of the world will be harnessed and brought to life lifting upwards of 40 million out of poverty along the way as their modernising economies leapfrog by building last.
Connected to China's rise will be a wider Asian Century already starting to be felt through India, Russia, and Turkey for example but will take on a further dimension in the Belt and Road as the likes of Vietnam, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Iran break into the world's 30 biggest economies and Indonesia scales the top four.
Further around the world Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, and Egypt to name just a few will further consolidate the Rise of the Rest. Cities of the future with state-of-the-art technology are to be constructed in Cairo and Malaysia for example and new tech hubs will emerge in the likes of Kazakhstan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Thailand.
The Belt and Road has many layers and is ever-growing; the beauty lies in its ambiguity; from six land corridors criss-crossing Eurasia, maritime routes from the Horn of Africa to the Arctic, academic and cultural collaboration, a 5G-IoT inspired digital data realm, to satellites and outer space. No stone it appears will be left unturned; the BRI is decidedly Chinese in its epic nature, vision, and ambition.