ABSTRACT
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has grown to become an extensive and wide-ranging phenomenon that is here to stay. Announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013, it envisioned China’s reaching across the world to strengthen communication, improve road connectivity, enhance trade and investment facilitation, and foster people-to-people exchanges. The BRI has now become the most important element of the “Chinese Dream” and assumed center-stage in China’s vision of a “community of shared destiny” in a globalized world of the new century, the test of its civilizational strength and resilience. This contribution reviews the contemporary geopolitical, economic, and social aspects of the BRI.
