Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative, known in China as the One Belt One Road and sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the government of China in 2013 to invest in more than 150 countries and international organizations. The BRI is composed of six urban development land corridors linked by road, rail, energy, and digital infrastructure and the Maritime Silk Road linked by the development of ports. BRI is both a geopolitical and a geoeconomic project. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping originally announced the strategy as the "Silk Road Economic Belt" during an official visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013. "Belt" refers to the proposed overland routes for road and rail transportation through landlocked Central Asia along the famed historical trade routes of the Western Regions; "road" is short for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which refers to the Indo-Pacific sea routes through Southeast Asia to South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.