The belt and road Initiative is of course an opportunity to influence in particular the neighbourhood, but it also provides global reach. It comes at very high risk, however, because China has sold this to its population by saying that this money will be repaid, that this is a worthwhile investment. If some of these investments—some of the bigger ones, especially—start going sour, then the whole narrative around which social cohesion in China is now built, which is on the one hand the ideological narrative around nationalism and on the other hand one of economic prosperity, will ultimately be undermined.
I think the belt and road Initiative, then, presents considerable risk as much as it presents opportunity for China, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic and the economic uncertainties across many of the countries to which China has lent massive amounts of money.