Five myths of China’s Belt and Road Initiative

By and large, China’s Belt & Road Initiative gets a bad press in the U.S., much of Europe, Japan and India. But a lot of the criticism — it’s a “debt trap," for instance, or China’s bid for empire — is way overblown.

At last week’s second annual Belt & Road gathering in Beijing, President Xi Jinping went out of his way to address international concerns. Whether this represents a reset, a course correction, or simply a rhetorical gesture remains to be seen. There are no easy fixes: The problems mainly arise when China exports the massive flaws of its own development model along with its vast industrial capacity. The former include corruption and cronyism, non-transparent contracts and, above all, pollution. Critics should focus less on debt and more on the fleets of coal-fired power stations China is building across stretches of the Eurasian landmass.