Belt and Road Is More Chaos Than Conspiracy
China’s flagship foreign-policy initiative is closer to a branding exercise than a master plan for geopolitical domination.
Perhaps not the road to global domination.
Photographer: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images
Is China’s Belt and Road Initiative a bold infrastructure vision, or a slush fund? The question is becoming more pressing.
Chinese officials offered to help bail out state-owned 1Malaysia Development Bhd., kill off investigations into alleged corruption at the fund, and spy on journalists looking into it in exchange for stakes in Belt-and-Road railway and pipeline projects in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. If proven, that would offer the clearest link yet between the 1MDB scandal and Belt and Road, which is still seen by many as a more effective rival to multilateral investors such as the currently leaderless World Bank and Asian Development Bank. China has denied that money in the program was used to help bail out 1MDB.