The End of the Chinese Century?

The Belt and Road Initiative, when first unveiled by Xi Jinping in 2013, was envisioned as even bigger and grander than America's Marshall Plan. Famously referred to as the 'New Silk Route', it proposed an overland 'Silk Road Economic Belt' connecting China with Europe through Central Asia and the 'Maritime Silk Road' that the Chinese claim existed in ancient times across the Indian Ocean. The BRI would not only restore China's glory as a global trading nation, but also establish its status as the world leader, overtaking the United States.

A decade later, not everyone in Asia and the Pacific shares Xi's visions of a China-dominated future. Countries like Sri Lanka and Laos have fallen into Chinese debt traps due to the loans they took as part of the BRI, in others like Thailand and Central Asian republics, Chinese investment is unwelcome; and in some, like Pakistan, the opposition to China's forays has been outright violent.

In The End of the Chinese Century?, journalist Bertil Lintner takes us through the history of the BRI and China's global expansionist plans. He casts and expert eye on the once-much-vaunted project's future and what its failure might mean for the 'Chinese Century'--and how that would affect India, which continues to be a counterpoint to China on the world stage.

Auteur

Bertil Lintner is a Swedish journalist, author and strategic consultant who has been writing about Asia for nearly four decades. He was formerly the Myanmar correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review and Asia correspondent for the Swedish daily, Svenska Dagbladet, and Denmark's Politiken. He currently works as a correspondent for Asia Times. He has written extensively about Myanmar, India, China and North Korea in various local, national and international publications of over thirty countries. He mainly writes about organized crime, ethnic and political insurgencies and regional security. He has published several books, including China's India War and Great Game East. In 2004, Lintner received an award for excellence in reporting about North Korea from the Society of Publishers in Asia and, in 2014, another award from the same society for writing about religious conflicts in Myanmar.