ABSTRACT
This paper deals with views concerning the Maritime Silk Road (MSR), a central component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) initiated by China, that have been published over the last five years in a few leading newspapers. At the same time as being a major infrastructural and financial endeavour, the BRI simultaneously presents a great challenge to China regarding the presentation and promotion of the initiative to the citizens of the nations through which it passes. The paper makes use of the important and very useful framework proposed by Evelyn Goh to gauge varying degrees of success in large-scale geopolitical enterprises. Drawing on a small, and by no means comprehensive, selection of newspaper articles, the paper reaches the conclusion that the problem of insufficient transparency appears to have been expressed as a concern in the media of four South Asian countries.
