FEATURES | DIPLOMACY | EAST ASIA

How China’s Belt

and Road Took
Over the World
Mapping the BRI’s growth
over its first 10 years – and
its transformation from a
Eurasian transit corridor to
an initiative with global
scope.

By Shannon Tiezzi
September 12, 2023
 A Chinese worker directs another to load a
container of China Railway Express onto a
freight train bound to Europe at a railway
station in Shanghai, China, May 16, 2017.
Credit: Depositphotos

On September 7, 2013, Chinese President Xi

Jinping delivered a speech at Nazarbayev
University in Astana, Kazakhstan. Titled “Work
Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt,”
the address evoked the history of the ancient
Silk Road, which Xi traced back to a Chinese
envoy in the 2nd century BC.
The speech, as befitted its setting, was narrowly
focused on China and Central Asia, with
repeated references to historical ties. Xi’s
original proposal was that China and its
Eurasian neighbors “jointly build an economic
belt along the Silk Road.” The original proposal,
besides being geographically restricted, was also
relatively narrow in its sectoral scope. Xi
mentioned four areas for cooperation under the
Silk Road Economic Belt: policy consultation,
road connections, trade facilitation, and
monetary circulation (trade in local currencies).
One month later, the Silk Road Economic Belt
was joined by the “21st Century Maritime Silk
Road,” which Xi proposed during a similar
speech before the Indonesian legislature. The
Maritime Silk Road was also circumscribed in
both geographic and thematic scope: Xi’s
original pitch was limited to “maritime
cooperation” with the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Those were the humble roots of what became
known jointly as “One Belt, One Road,” later
rebranded into the “Belt and Road Initiative”
(BRI) in English (in Chinese, the One Belt, One
Road / 一带一路 nomenclature stuck). Over time,
the BRI grew far beyond the original vision to
expand into almost every region of the world.
As of the 10th anniversary of Xi’s speech in
Kazakhstan, 154 countries had signed official
documents on BRI cooperation with China,
according to the official “Belt and Road Portal”
website run by the Chinese government.
The sectors covered by the BRI had multiplied
as well. When Xi described the still-evolving
vision at the first Belt and Road Forum in May
2017, he still mentioned the original four pillars
of policy connectivity, infrastructure
connectivity (now expanded far beyond the
original reference to “roads” to include
railways, ports, pipelines, and digital
infrastructure), trade facilitation, and financial
connectivity (now including the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road
Fund, and other lending mechanisms in
addition to the use of local currencies). Added to
the mix was a new emphasis on “people-to-
people connectivity” in the form of cultural and
educational exchanges.
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The BRI has spawned even more subsets since
then: the Digital Silk Road, the Polar Silk Road,
the Health Silk Road, the Space Silk Road, and
the Green Silk Road. Far from its targeted
origins, today nearly any cooperation project
China undertakes in any country around the
world could conceivably be categorized as part
of the Belt and Road.
Given the initiative’s enormous growth since
September 2013, it’s worth looking at how the
Belt and Road spread around the world.

A Flourish map

Where the BRI Stands Today

As of September 2023, there are 154 members of
the BRI – 80 percent of the United Nations’ 193
member states. At this point, then, it’s easier to
discuss who’s not in the BRI.
The holdouts stand out easily in the map above:
all of North America, most of Western Europe,
and a good part of South America.
Elsewhere in the world, the United States’ fellow
Quad members – Australia, Japan, and India –
have not joined up; all have their own deep
concerns about China’s global ambitions. In the
Middle East, close U.S. allies Jordan and Israel
are the lone hold-outs. And then there are the 15
countries that don’t have diplomatic ties with
China: Taiwan’s 13 remaining diplomatic allies,
as well as Bhutan and Kosovo.
Perhaps the most curious omission is North
Korea – ostensibly a close Chinese partner that
is badly in need of the additional funding that
would come from BRI membership. It’s possible
that China simply saw extending Pyongyang an
invite to join as a bad risk: little to gain and a lot
to lose, given North Korea’s nuclear ambitions
and heavily sanctioned status. (BRI member
Iran is also a nuclear proliferation risk under
heavy sanctions, but unlike North Korea it
occupies a pivotal geographic location linking
Central Asia and the Middle East.)
The regional breakdown shines some light on
the regions where the BRI has found the most
buy-in. Both Central Asia and Southeast Asia
count every regional state as members; North
America is the only region of the world where
no state has joined. Sub-Saharan Africa and the
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions
also stand out, with over 90 percent of regional
countries having signed BRI agreements with
China.
 BRI mem

A Flourish chart

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Given that so much of the BRI’s image is tied to
lucrative infrastructure funding offers for
member states, it’s unsurprising that there is a
strong correlation between national wealth and
BRI membership. High income countries are the
least likely to join, with less than half (46
percent) having signed up. Upper middle
income countries have a much higher rate of
BRI membership, 79 percent. From there, the
rate jumps astronomically, with over 90 percent
of both lower middle and low income countries
having joined.

BRI member

A Flourish chart

In fact, there are just five lower middle and low

income countries that have not signed up, and
the reasons for each are obvious: Bhutan,
Eswatini, and Haiti don’t have diplomatic
relations with China; India has a deep distrust
of Beijing (and resents that the BRI passes
through Pakistan-administered Kashmir); and
North Korea, as discussed above, may be too
much of a pariah even for China.
How the BRI Got to Now
Just as interesting as where the Belt and Road
stands after its first decade is the story of how it
got there. The map below shows BRI member
counts as of December 31 for each calendar
year (aside from 2023, where data ends on
September 11).

  

of

A Flourish data visualization

Things started out fairly slowly, with just five

countries having signed BRI cooperation
documents by the end of 2014. All of them are
countries on what we can consider the original
concept of the Belt and Road – transit points
either by land or by sea linking China to Europe.
Things started to heat up in 2015, with 16
countries joining the Belt and Road. Again, the
geographic scope is within the bounds of a
China-Europe connection. Interestingly, eight
European countries joined this year, most of
them ahead of the China-Central and Eastern
Europe (CEE) summit that was held in Suzhou in
November of that year. This was the heyday of
what was then known as the “16+1” format,
with various countries in Central and Eastern
Europe vying to be China’s “bridge to Europe.”
This also marked a major trend in BRI
expansion: Many of these agreements would be
signed in the immediate lead-up to a large
regional summit. That, in turn, raises questions
about just how much individual thought China
was putting into each agreement, as opposed to
rushing to grab as many signatories as possible
to showcase at a major diplomatic event.
Without a big headlining summit, 2016 saw a
return to modest expansion, with just five
countries signing new agreements. By contrast,
31 countries would join in 2017 – a surge driven
largely by the first Belt and Road Forum, held in
Beijing that May. By the end of the year, nearly
all of Central and Southeast Asia had signed on,
with the exceptions of Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia,
and the Philippines. Central and Eastern Europe
has also become a solid Belt and Road bloc, with
more members from that region than from
Africa as of the end of 2017.
It’s also important to note that, as of 2017, the
BRI still largely followed the basic geographic
focus first laid out in Xi’s addresses in
Kazakhstan and Indonesia. Of the 58 states that
had signed up to the Belt and Road by end of
2017, Panama and New Zealand are the only
states not conceivably on a map of overland or
maritime transit routes between China and
Europe.
2018, however, would the year the BRI truly
went global.
A whopping 67 countries signed BRI agreements
that year, driven by two major summits: the
Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)
summit in Beijing and a summit of Pacific Island
leaders on the sidelines of the APEC summit in
Papua New Guinea. Those two events alone saw
38 countries join the BRI fold: 31 African states
just before or after FOCAC 2018, and seven
Pacific Island countries ahead of the summit in
Papua New Guinea.
By this point, the BRI had lost all semblance of
the original Eurasian connection, instead
becoming a catch-all for China’s foreign policy
in general. BRI members can be found
throughout the Pacific Islands region, Central
and South America, and across all of the African
continent.
2019 was another good year for growth, thanks
to China’s hosting of the second Belt and Road
forum in May of that year. Fifteen states joined
up, 10 of them in the lead-up to the big event.
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But things came skidding to a halt in 2020,
thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed
China’s borders for nearly three years. The only
addition to the Belt and Road in 2020 was
Kiribati, which sneaked in just before the world
shut down.
Kiribati’s President Taneti Maamau visited
China on January 6, 2020 – the first such visit
after Kiribati established ties with China in
September 2019. This typifies another pattern of
BRI growth: Since its announcement in 2013,
countries that have cut ties with Taiwan tend to
sign up to the Belt and Road as part of their
diplomatic embrace of Beijing. Panama in 2017,
the Dominican Republic in 2018, Solomon
Islands in 2019, Kiribati in 2020, Nicaragua in
2022, and Honduras in 2023 all followed this
trend.
Ahead of the FOCAC summit in 2021, China
inked deals with most of the African countries
that had been holding out; all seven of the
countries to join that year are part of sub-
Saharan Africa. Another five countries from
around the world joined in 2022, and just one
has signed up thus far in 2023.
The slow-down in growth is not surprising,
given the simple fact that there are fewer
countries that haven’t joined – and they mostly
have good reasons for refusing and will be
difficult to persuade.
Does the BRI’s Spread Matter?
The trillion dollar question remains: How much
does it really matter when a country signs a BRI
cooperation document? In one sense, of course
it matters – such agreements are a handy
barometer of countries that have a positive
relationship with Beijing (or, at least, did at one
point). In addition to foreign governments
hoping for increased investment and trade
flows from China, the symbolism of growing the
BRI to the maximum extent clearly matters for
Beijing. That’s added motivation for the
signatories: If Beijing is pushing a partner
government to sign on, they are likely to do so
absent a pressing national interest pulling in the
opposite direction (for example, India’s
concerns about the BRI passing through
disputed areas).
But BRI agreements are non-binding and of little
value if not accompanied by actual project
contracts. As discovered by Italy, which is
reconsidering its membership in the BRI club, a
cooperation document doesn’t always mean
much in practice. Similarly, the CEE countries,
some of the earliest members of the Belt and
Road Initiative, have largely become
disillusioned with China in general and the BRI
in particular.
Indeed, data from the China Global Investment
Tracker (CGIT), published by the American
Enterprise Institute, shows that the United
States, Australia, Brazil, France, and Germany
all were among the top investment destinations
for China from 2013 to now – despite none
having joined the BRI.
This is not to say the BRI is meaningless – far
from it. The CGIT also tracked $564 billion in
Chinese funding for construction and BRI-
related projects from 2013 to 2023. AidData
found that China outspends the United States by
a 2-to-1 ratio on international development
finance – a shift in the balance of global aid that
largely occurred following the BRI’s launch in

“
2013. As Ana Horigoshi of AidData noted in her
recent article for The Diplomat Magazine:

In the first five years of the BRI (2013-

2017), China bankrolled an average of
$83.5 billion a year in overseas
development projects, a net increase of
$31.3 billion per year on average over the
five years prior (2008-2012). The net

”
increase alone is equivalent to the total
U.S. average yearly financing in the 2013-
2017 period.

But not all BRI member countries are created

equal, especially given that much of the raw
funding is tied up in “mega projects” worth $500
million or more. AidData further found that
“despite larger loans and expanded loan
portfolios, BRI has not led to any major changes
in the sectoral or geographical composition of
China’s overseas development finance
program.”
In other words, signing up to the BRI does not
guarantee a major influx of Chinese investment
or developing finance, nor does sitting outside
the Belt and Road preclude benefiting from
China’s outward cash flows. Chinese money is
largely flowing to the same places and sectors as
before the BRI – just in larger quantities.
In that sense, the growth of the BRI is perhaps
best understood as symbolic: a picture of
countries whose aspirations for their
relationships with China outweigh their
concerns. With that in mind, the BRI’s reach
today is important, if only as a good reminder
that the vast majority of the world is not
interested in “decoupling” from China.
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AUTHORS

STAFF AUTHOR
Shannon Tiezzi
Shannon Tiezzi is Editor-in-Chief at
The Diplomat.
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Features Diplomacy East Asia China Belt and Road

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