Published: 12:51 AM, 28 June 2026
Replacing BRI: US Strategies Aim to Roll Out Substantial Alternatives
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy undertaking and the world's largest infrastructure program, poses a significant challenge to U.S. economic, political, climate change, security, and global health interests. Since BRI's launch in 2013, Chinese banks and companies have financed and built everything from power plants, railways, highways, and ports to telecommunications infrastructure, fiber-optic cables, and smart cities around the world. If implemented sustainably and responsibly, BRI has the potential to meet long-standing developing country needs and spur global economic growth. To date, however, the risks for both the United States and recipient countries raised by BRI's implementation considerably outweigh its benefits.
BRI was initially designed to connect China's modern coastal cities to its underdeveloped interior and to its Southeast, Central, and South Asian neighbors, cementing China's position at the center of a more connected world. The initiative has since outgrown its original regional corridors, expanding to all corners of the globe. Its scope now includes a Digital Silk Road intended to improve recipients' telecommunications networks, artificial intelligence capabilities, cloud computing, e-commerce and mobile payment systems, surveillance technology, and other high-tech areas, along with a Health Silk Road designed to operationalize China's vision of global health governance.1 Hundreds of projects around the world now fall under the BRI umbrella.
U.S. inaction as much as Chinese assertiveness is responsible for the economic and strategic predicament in which the United States finds itself. U.S. withdrawal helped create the vacuum that China filled with BRI. Although the United States long ago identified an interest in promoting infrastructure, trade, and connectivity throughout Asia and repeatedly invoked the imagery of the Silk Road, it has not met the inherent needs of the region.2 Its own lending to and investment in many BRI countries was limited and is now declining. Its cutbacks in research and development and investments in advanced technologies have allowed China to move ahead in the development and sale of fifth-generation (5G) technology, the installation of high-speed rail, the production of solar and wind energy, the promulgation of electronic payment platforms, the development of ultra-high-voltage transmission systems, and more. Despite enjoying a leading role in the World Bank and regional development banks, the United States has watched those institutions move away from backing significant infrastructure projects. Washington has not joined regional trade and investment agreements that would have enhanced U.S. economic ties to Asia.
These collective shortcomings allowed China to tap into a legitimate need around the world for new infrastructure and to fill the gap in infrastructure financing and construction in a way that benefits it. Beijing's ability to offer hard and digital infrastructure around the world at low prices is made possible by a combination of political backing from the Chinese Communist Party, the financial power of its state-owned banks, excess capacity in a number of important sectors, and its development of large, highly capable manufacturing and technology companies. If BRI meets little competition or resistance, Beijing could become the hub of global trade, set important technical standards that would disadvantage non-Chinese companies, lock countries into carbon-intensive power generation, have greater influence over countries' political decisions, and acquire more power-projection capabilities for its military.
The United States has a clear interest in adopting a strategy that both pressures China to alter its BRI practices and provides an effective alternative to BRI-one that promotes sustainable infrastructure, upholds high environmental and anticorruption standards, ensures U.S. companies can operate on a level playing field, and assists countries in preserving their political independence.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) sponsors Independent Task Forces to assess issues of critical importance to U.S. foreign policy. Task Force members endorse the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation. They participate in the Task Force in their individual, not institutional, capacities. Observers participate in Task Force discussions but are not asked to join the consensus.
>>Bernard Priyam, AA
