ABSTRACT

This chapter scantly discusses mounting backlash in 2018 to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) - signifying a possible inflection point - coalescing around global concerns over Chinese-led state-capture of the United Nations (UN), its development agenda, and OBOR countries arising from China’s exportation of corruption, economic and organized crime, and trafficking (the OBORization process). Infamously labeled an “Empire of Bribes” by the United States for alleged BRI-debt-trap diplomacy and loan shark-like financing of developing countries’ infrastructure projects, China’s 2017 and 2018 UN-Bribes-for-BRI scandals involving Party-state actors from the Macau and Hong Kong Special Administrative Regions exposed the pivotal role of United Front actors and government-organized nongovernmental organizations masquerading as private entities in Beijing’s BRI-energized state-capture activities.