One Belt One Road

CHINA
ANALYSIS

"ONE BELT, ONE ROAD":
CHINA'S GREAT LEAP
OUTWARD

ABOUT

The Chinese have long been obsessed
with strategic culture, power balances and
geopolitical shifts. Academic institutions,
think tanks, journals and web-based debates
are growing in number and quality and give
China’s foreign policy breadth and depth.

China Analysis, which is published in both
French and English, introduces European
audiences to these debates inside China’s
expert and think-tank world and helps the
European policy community understand how
China’s leadership thinks about domestic
and foreign policy issues. While freedom
of expression and information remain
restricted in China’s media, these published
sources and debates provide an important
way of understanding emerging trends
within China.
Each issue of China Analysis focuses on a
specific theme and draws mainly on Chinese
mainland sources. However, it also monitors
content in Chinese-language publications
from Hong Kong and Taiwan, which
occasionally include news and analysis that
is not published in the mainland and reflects
the diversity of Chinese thinking.

June 2015

The French version of China Analysis can be
accessed online at www.centreasia.eu.

Introduction
by François Godement
China has created an action plan for its Silk Road concept
in the form of the “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative.
It is grandiose, potentially involving an area that covers
55 percent of world GNP, 70 percent of global population,
and 75 percent of known energy reserves. China’s financial
commitments to the project seem huge: some multilateral
and bilateral pledges may overlap, but it is still likely we are
looking at up to $300 billion in infrastructure financing from
China in the coming years1 – not counting the leveraging
effect on private investors and lenders, and the impact of
peer competition. Japan, for example, has just announced
a $110 billion infrastructure fund for Asia, and the Asian
Development Bank is hurriedly revising its...