Abstract
In addition to promoting trade, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been used to transfer domestic industrial over-capacity overseas, to build bases and geostrategic facilities abroad, to seize strategic natural resources, to expand international influence, and even to undertake united-front work against Taiwan. These and other fallout such as the debt trap and sovereignty erosion have been questioned by the international community. Moreover, Beijing seems to have started combining the Belt and Road Initiative with a Chinese recent foreign policy direction that highlights the “Global South” countries, using the former to expand Chinese influence in the latter. In addition, there is analysis indicating that in addition to competition, the Belt and Road Initiative and similar projects promoted by Western countries can be mutually complementary. Overall, the international community’s views and choices regarding the “Belt and Road Initiative” have become diverse and complicated. This can be attributed to its positive and negative impacts. If the view of it as “complementarity” gains ground internationally, more countries may be willing to try the Belt and Road Initiative projects in the future. Still, the overall effects still require close and balanced scrutiny.