Xi Jinping launches the Belt and Road Initiative

Date

7 September 2013

Category

Economy & trade

Region

Global

Era

Contemporary

Significance

Speaking at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, on 7 September 2013, Chinese leader Xi Jinping proposed building a 'Silk Road Economic Belt' linking China across Central Asia to Europe.

Combined with a maritime '21st-Century Silk Road' announced weeks later, the vision became the Belt and Road Initiative, China's signature foreign-economic policy. Through state-backed loans and construction firms, it financed ports, railways, highways, pipelines and power plants across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and parts of Europe, eventually involving well over a hundred participating countries. The initiative expanded Chinese commercial reach, secured trade routes and resources, and extended Beijing's geopolitical influence, offering an alternative source of development finance to Western institutions. Critics raised concerns about debt sustainability, opaque contracts, environmental impact and strategic dependency. Whether seen as development partnership or instrument of power projection, the Belt and Road became a defining vehicle of China's global rise.

Related economy & trade events

• The global financial crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers
  15 September 2008
• The US-China trade war begins
  6 July 2018
• The global inflation surge
  2021–2023 (peak June 2022)
• Founding of the World Trade Organization
  1 January 1995
• Nixon shock ends gold convertibility and ushers in 1970s stagflation
  15 August 1971
• China's Reform and Opening-Up Begins Under Deng Xiaoping
  December 18, 1978

Further reading

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

The wider story

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

Peter Frankopan

Best-selling world history told through the trade routes that moved goods, faiths and ideas.

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