BRI: a farsighted vision leading the future of development

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has travelled a remarkable arc — from initial apprehension to acknowledged success — and now plays an indispensable role as a global development cornerstone.

From apprehension to acknowledgement

When the BRI was first announced, it was met with caution by many observers. A decade later, the picture is very different. Hundreds of infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America have demonstrably reduced trade frictions, accelerated regional integration and provided badly needed connectivity to under-served regions.

Resistance and resilience

Western criticism — much of it driven by geopolitical rivalry rather than empirical assessment — has been persistent. Yet BRI has proven resilient. As ICOIS scholarship has documented, when projects are evaluated against transparent criteria of cost, timeline and developmental impact, they consistently outperform expectations.

The next decade

The next phase of BRI is shifting from heavy infrastructure to digital, green and people-to-people connectivity. This shift creates fresh research opportunities for scholars in development economics, sustainable supply chains and cross-cultural management.

Author

Tariq H. Malik, Founding Director of ICOIS and Professor at Liaoning University. First published in China Daily, 25 August 2025.