Investment in President Xi Jinping’s signature “Belt and Road Initiative” declined last year, according to several measures, raising doubts about whether commercial enterprises are committed to a strategy for a new Silk Road defined as much by geopolitics as by profit-seeking.
Twenty-eight heads of state will gather in Beijing this weekend for a conference intended to “define and actuate” Mr Xi’s plans for a “Silk Road Economic Belt” and a “21st-Century Maritime Silk Road”, first proposed in 2013.
The initiative centres on building a network of roads, railways, ports, power plants and fuel pipelines connecting China with south-east and central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
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