Viewpoint: We’re All Actors in the New Silk Road Play
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
By Pepe Escobar
It’s the same old story: The dogs of demonization bark while the New Silk Road caravan advances. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), according to a projection by Anglo-Australian mining and metals giant BHP Billiton, will generate as much as US$1.3 trillion in myriad projects up to 2023 – only a decade after its official launch by Chinese President Xi Jinping in both Astana (now Nur-Sultan) and Jakarta.
It’s easy to forget that the BRI – a massive connectivity project, both geo-strategic and geo-economic, now in effect all across the Eurasian landmass, as well as straddling the South China Sea, plus the Indian Ocean all the way to East Africa – is less than six years old, and projected to last until 2049.
Photo courtesy of Olivier ROUX.
