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China’s Belt and Road Initiative has changed substantially since Xi first announced it in 2013, and its aims, to a large degree, depend on who you ask.
Chinese officials characterize the program — which now has more than 150 partner countries — as a push to revive the ancient Silk Road trading network by building infrastructure to connect Asia, Europe, and Africa. Analysts say it is an amorphous program with no official criteria that can include everything from private lenders catering to international investments to state-directed projects. Western critics say it is a play for Chinese influence in developing nations and in some cases a strategy to lock countries into China’s sphere of influence by loading them with debt, a claim that is widely disputed.
The changing nature of the BRI reflects a wider shift in China’s trade: The country’s exports and their destinations are “much more diversified” compared to 20 or even 10 years ago, said Marc Gronwald, an economist at the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. In 2000, the country’s main trading partners were mostly richer economies, but in 2022, nations like Vietnam, Malaysia, and India joined that group, he said.
Chinese manufacturers have mostly shipped clean-tech products abroad as commodities rather than as part of a wider project, according to Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst of the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. In comparison, their role in foreign coal plants comprises financing, engineering, and operation of the facilities. But that has been changing since 2023, when Beijing instructed the BRI to shift away from mega infrastructure projects to “small but beautiful” ones, such as solar plants in Africa.
Myllyvirta’s analysis found that developing countries drove 70% of the growth in China’s exports of solar, wind turbines, and electric cars between 2021 and 2024, with Brazil being the largest market over the period.
Chinese manufacturers have increased building factories overseas, too — a push that will make the country’s renewable exports “more resilient,” said Myllyvirta.
“If there is an EV factory in Brazil or a solar factory in Vietnam employing local workforce, paying local taxes… then their policy makers will think twice before doing something that would completely jeopardize the business,” he said.
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