Countries of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – Green Finance & Development Center (2024)

FAQs

Which countries are included in BRI? ›

China's colossal infrastructure investments may usher in a new era of trade and growth for economies in Asia and beyond. But skeptics worry that China is laying a debt trap for borrowing governments. The Belt and Road Initiative is a massive China-led infrastructure project that aims to stretch around the globe.

It covers six emerging markets in ASEAN, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

As of January 2020, 57 countries have not joined the BRI. In addition to the United States and Canada in North America, most of these countries are clustered in Europe and Latin America, with smaller numbers found in Asia and Africa.

Economically, the US did not compete with the Belt and Road Initiative over scale and capital, but instead focused on three areas: digital economy, cybersecurity, and energy and infrastructure development.

China entered into diplomatic relations with Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Maldives in Southeast Asia and South Asia, seven countries including Iran, Turkey and Kuwait in West Asia and the Middle East and five countries in South Pacific such as Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (一带一路) is a strategy initiated by the People's Republic of China that seeks to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks with the aim of improving regional integration, increasing trade and stimulating economic growth.

BRI creates unfair advantages for Chinese companies, leaving U.S. and other foreign companies unable to compete in a number of BRI countries. China has successfully used its development model to create industrial champions.

The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and largest financial center is Shanghai.

Under BRI, Chinese banks and companies seek to fund and build roads, power plants, ports, railways, 5G networks, and fiber-optic cables around the world.

Is Hong Kong part of BRI? ›

Hong Kong in the Belt & Road Initiative

With the emergence of the Belt and Road boom have come many related research papers, but few have addressed Hong Kong's role and opportunities in the initiative. Hong Kong in the Belt and Road Initiative fills this gap.

The BRI is an umbrella initiative spanning a multitude of projects designed to promote the flow of goods, investment, and people. The new connections fostered by the BRI could reconfigure relationships, reroute economic activity, and shift power within and between states.

China's finance and investments in the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) Chinese engagement through financial investments and contractual cooperation for 2022 in the 147 countries of the Belt and Road Initiative was about USD67. 8 billion based on over 200 deals.

2021). 9. Korea and China Select Eurasia Initiative and “One Belt and One Road” as Focus for Bilateral Cooperation This Year.

Of the 195 countries in the world: 54 countries are in Africa. 48 in Asia. 44 in Europe.

The cooperation program has achieved significant results in the areas of transport, trade facilitation, energy, and trade policy. Challenges are the lack of trade openness and other nonphysical barriers, the scarcity of viable infrastructure opportunities and a well-planned road maintenance program.

While it may promote economic growth and infrastructure development in developing countries, the BRI ultimately pushes forward a trifecta of environmental devastation in the forms of coal, the Polar Silk Road, and biodiversity loss.

The Two Corridors, One Belt (abbreviated as TCOB) is a connectivity initiative involving Vietnam and China. It is a part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a Chinese global development initiative fostering connectivity especially across Eurasia.

Today, the United States imports more from China than from any other country, and China is one of the largest export markets for U.S. goods and services. This trade has helped the United States in the form of lower prices for consumers and higher profits for corporations, but it has also come with costs.

Bhutan is the only UN member state that has never explicitly recognised either the PRC or the ROC. The Republic of China considers itself to be the sole legitimate government of China (including Taiwan), and therefore claims exclusive sovereignty over all territory controlled by the PRC.

Has the US ever been allies with China? ›

President Franklin D. Roosevelt made support of China against Japan a high priority after 1938. The US was allied to the Republic of China (ROC) during the Pacific War against Japan (1941–1945).

Tianchao and Tianxia. Tianchao (天朝; pinyin: Tiāncháo), translated as "heavenly dynasty" or "Celestial Empire;" and Tianxia (天下; pinyin: Tiānxià) translated as "under heaven," are both phrases that have been used to refer to China.

The Belt and Road Initiative includes includes 1/3 of world trade and GDP and over 60% of the world's population.

The treadmill is another great example of a belt driven mechanism. The belt in this drive system is not to be confused with the tread on which the runner directly runs; rather the belt drive system is the toothed, synchronous belt that transfers the rotary motion from the central motor to the drive pulley.

China's Foreign Investment in South America:

As of May 2022, seven countries in South America participate in the PRC's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.

Is the Belt And Road Initiative successful? At present the BRI appears to be successful. It has faced a lot of Western criticism however appears to have been able to finance and build infrastructure in poorer nations that would otherwise not had the opportunity.

The UK's professional services, insurance and maritime firms also provide critical support to BRI deals' robust financing structures and ensure that risks are well mitigated and diversified.

The Chinese diaspora in the United States is comprised of approximately 5.4 million individuals who were born in China, Hong Kong, or Macao, or reported Chinese ancestry or race, according to MPI tabulation of data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2021 ACS. The Chinese diaspora is the ninth largest in the country.

Modern journalists using the term First World countries are typically describing the most industrialized nations. This includes all of the major actors on both sides of the Cold War: the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, and more.

The U.S. and China have been head-to-head for the position of the third largest country in the world. Considering the total surface area of both the countries including land and water, the United States takes up 9.8 million square kilometers while China has 9.6 million square kilometers, according to World Atlas.

What are the disadvantages of BRI? ›

However, projects under the BRI face certain drawbacks such as socio-environmental risks, financial risks, and governance and corruption challenges in partner states.

Unlike Italy, Germany and France have not formally joined the BRI.

A “Chinese citizen” is a person of Chinese nationality under the CNL. Hong Kong residents who are of Chinese descent and were born in the Chinese territories (including Hong Kong), or persons who satisfy the criteria laid down in the CNL as having Chinese nationality, are Chinese nationals.

Among the 140 participating members of the BRI, approximately 60 are contracting parties of the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (“the New York Convention”). This includes the UAE, who acceded to the New York Convention in 2006 without making any declarations or reservations.

According to the World Bank (2020), the GDP of the 57 BRI countries accounted for 32.55% of the total global GDP in 2019, and their carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion increased from 38.65% in 2000 to 57.06% in 2018, which are likely to increase further as their economies develop.

However, this has declined over time, and as of 2022 they controlled approximately 25% of foreign-owned debt. As of January 2023, the five countries owning the most US debt are Japan ($1.1 trillion), China ($859 billion), the United Kingdom ($668 billion), Belgium ($331 billion), and Luxembourg ($318 billion).

China's debt is nearly 44% of its GDP and its local governments owe nearly $5.14 trillion. With the economic slowdown and collapse of land sales revenue, provinces and local governments in China are facing an embarrassing situation.

In 2021, total Chinese investment in countries of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) pared down to around 59.5 billion U.S. dollars, a slight year-over-year decrease.

Singapore as a pragmatic, nimble, knowledge-based economy was one of the first countries to publicly express support for the BRI and has continued to be a strong proponent of the project. The support stems in part from Singapore's excellent and long-standing relationship with China.

Our empirical results show that aggregate export behaviour increased significantly after BRI. However, ownership matters when evaluating firms' reactions, with SOEs and foreign firms benefitting, but privately owned domestic firms not.

What has China's One Belt One Road Initiative included? ›

Purchase and construction of port facilities and associated economic zones in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Oman and Djibouti are intended to provide China with maritime access and economic benefit across the Indian Ocean.

Switzerland is the best country in the world for 2022.

The newest internationally recognized country in the world is the African country of South Sudan, which declared independence on July 9, 2011. In the following days, it became also the newest member of the United Nations. You Name It!

The BRI comprises a Silk Road Economic Belt – a trans-continental passage that links China with south east Asia, south Asia, Central Asia, Russia and Europe by land – and a 21st century Maritime Silk Road, a sea route connecting China's coastal regions with south east and south Asia, the South Pacific, the Middle East ...

The BRI route offers significant opportunities for Germany as Europe's largest partner for the BRI.

Energy engagement in different countries

Analyzing Chinese energy engagement in different BRI countries, we find that Saudi Arabia was the country that received the most energy engagement in 2022 (USD5. 4 billion), followed by Argentina.

Despite potential gains for the United States, BRI poses significant risks to U.S. economic interests. BRI's size and scope give it the potential to boost global gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as $7.1 trillion by 2040 and reduce global trade costs by up to 2.2 percent.

The BRI aims at promoting win-win cooperation by strengthening policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and people-to-people bonds. The BRI covers Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, North Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe.

While Vietnam's endorsem*nt of the BRI shows its desire to avoid confrontation with China, Hanoi is cognisant of the risk of economic dependence on Beijing and the opacity of BRI projects. Vietnam has proactively constrained its engagement in this initiative.

Is Vietnam a member of BRI? ›

In the context of Vietnam's participation in the BRI, as a result of Vietnam's geographical advantage due to its proximity to the backbone of the regional economy, especially in the South and Central regions, Vietnam's sea route is an important link in the BRI framework.

The BRI's main accomplishment was to provide a cohesive and permissive environment for state agencies and businesses to search for a way out. The diverse BRI projects and messages demonstrate that China's solutions to these economic problems have been varied.

"Through Belt and Road Initiative, roads, railways, bridges, hospitals, schools and airports among others, have been constructed in Africa, which has boosted trade, increased job creation, improved transport services and education and health among African countries," he added.

Who is funding the Belt and Road Initiative? The Chinese state is the underwriter for the initiative, via its four state-owned banks lending to state owned enterprises.

Britain also wanted more control over their trade with China, as they could only trade with certain officials called Hong merchants. The Opium Wars resulted in two treaties, each expanding the size of Britain's Hong Kong territory.

Belt and Road Countries -- Venezuela. Abstract : China and Venezuela signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on September 14, 2018.