It has been over 11 years since Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative. Since then, hundreds of billions of dollars have flowed from China to infrastructure projects across the world, leaving some Western observers wary of Beijing’s growing influence and critical of the United States for doing too little to counter it.
From the initiative’s beginning in 2013 until 2021, China had disbursed roughly $679 billion combined to 165 countries to fund infrastructure projects, according to an October report published by the Government Accountability Office. While China’s Belt and Road spending slumped during the COVID-19 pandemic, a recent American Enterprise Institute report found that construction activity associated with the initiative jumped by 40% during the first half of 2024. A dashboard maintained by the AEI shows that China has already spent tens of billions of dollars on projects in Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America.
