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Belt and Road Initiative
ChinaDiplomacy

Is China’s Belt and Road Initiative running out of steam?

  • A decade after the initiative started, the amount being invested in projects in Africa has dipped to its lowest level
  • While observers say the strategy will continue, it seems ‘small and beautiful’ is its new catch-cry with developers

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Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen
Jevans Nyabiage
China hosts the third Belt and Road Forum this week, marking the 10-year anniversary of its multinational investment initiative. In the second of a three-part series, Jevans Nyabiage looks at whether concerns over debt burdens and a sluggish domestic economy might have an impact on investment.

At Kenya’s Miritini Railway Station, near the coastal city of Mombasa, a statue of legendary Chinese explorer Zheng He sits on a plinth greeting passengers, more than 600 years after his voyage to the town of Malindi, further up the coast.

The statue’s plaque explains the ties between Kenya and China that began with Zheng’s visit in 1418, saying: “Zheng’s fleet paid four visits to Mombasa, enhancing mutual understanding between China and Kenya and strengthening Kenya-China friendly exchanges.”

Never mind that back then there was no country called Kenya, and China was, in fact, the Ming dynasty.

Now, centuries later, China is continuing what Admiral Zheng began, connecting the history with projects such as Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) as Beijing cements relations with this part of Africa.

China funded and built the railway line that runs from Miritini for passenger trains and from the port of Mombasa for freight trains to the capital Nairobi, with an extension to Naivasha, a town in the Central Rift Valley.

It is part of a mega plan to recreate an ancient Silk Road under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.
SCMP Series
10 years of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
[ 2 of 3 ]
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