ABSTRACT
“Background facts and literature” summarizes the basic facts about the lower economic development of China’s Western and South-Western provinces and underlines how economic underdevelopment is somewhat related to lack of transport infrastructure. The BRI has been viewed by many experts as a strategy mostly, if not exclusively, dominated by China’s need to reshape its foreign policy. The chapter addresses one of the channels through which the catching-up of the less affluent parts of China—notably, the Western and South-Western provinces—might be achieved. We reminded, in fact, that the GDP per capita gap across China’s provinces largely overlaps with the cross-provincial gap in terms of transport infrastructure. In that respect, with its westbound projection, the BRI would help boost the transport infrastructure endowment of the up-to-now disadvantaged Western and South-Western provinces.
