Ten years after the "the Belt and Road" initiative was put forward, China is trying to revitalize this huge infrastructure plan by greatly reducing its risks.
  This initiative still occupies a central position in China's global vision after experiencing a series of difficulties in bad debts and high rescue payments. The purpose of this conference is to inject new vitality into the plan while preventing the recurrence of the excessive behavior that led to these problems.
Large projects in the past are giving way to smaller and more targeted projects, including areas such as green energy and healthcare. After China's large policy banks contracted their loans, more Chinese lending institutions began to provide financing. These new participants did not fight alone, but instead collaborated with Western banks and multilateral lending institutions to draw on their risk management experience in providing high-value loans to unreliable borrowers.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, representatives from more than 130 countries will attend this year's "the Belt and Road" Forum. But it is currently unclear which countries' top leaders will attend. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that he will attend. Neither US President Joe Biden nor leaders of major European countries will attend, which not only reflects the deteriorating relationship between China and the West, but also reflects the doubts raised since the launch of the "the Belt and Road" initiative.
However, there are signs that the "the Belt and Road Initiative" is recovering some vitality after the reduction of loans and construction during the COVID-19 epidemic. According to the statistics of China's global projects by the American Enterprise Institute, an American conservative think-tank, in the first six months of 2023, the total value of the construction and investment agreements signed by Chinese enterprises in connection with the "the Belt and Road" initiative reached 40 billion US dollars. If this speed is maintained, the total value of agreements reached this year will exceed $68 billion in 2022.
However, before the COVID-19 outbreak, the annual investment of the "the Belt and Road Initiative" usually exceeded 100 billion US dollars. On average, the transaction size in the past few years has also been smaller than the peak period before the pandemic.
Analysts closely following the project said that after experiencing recent challenges, the Chinese government sought to improve the level of discipline of the initiative, which means that the "the Belt and Road Initiative" may not return to its previous scale soon. Another uncertainty is whether countries such as Sri Lanka and Zambia, which have borrowed from the "the Belt and Road" initiative, will be as keen to participate in the project as before after the debt crisis.
"The the Belt and Road is not dead. It has really taken a long nap," said Derek Scissors, a senior researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. "The Chinese government is willing to reinvigorate the 'the Belt and Road' after the epidemic, but it will not return to the pre epidemic activity level."
  He quickly announced that this ambitious plan was the "Century Project", with the ultimate goal of linking Asia more closely with Europe, Africa, and Latin America.
For developing countries, the "the Belt and Road" initiative provides infrastructure transformation, while avoiding the conditions of political reform, environment and other sensitive issues usually attached to western development funds, which are sometimes harsh. Richer countries see opportunities to renovate old facilities and promote trade with the world's second largest economy.
For China, the "the Belt and Road" initiative gives the Chinese government the opportunity to obtain more generous returns from its huge foreign exchange reserves, as well as the opportunity to establish alliances and convince other countries of the benefits of China's economic development model different from that of the West. The "the Belt and Road" also makes it possible for China to ensure the supply of raw materials and find new customers for exports.
With the support of China, a deep-water port is being built in Lagos, Nigeria.
"For China, the benefits of the 'the Belt and Road' are mainly geopolitical, which is a way to gain friends and influence," said Julian Evans Pritchard, head of China economy at Capital Economics.
According to the estimates of Fudan University in China, from 2013 to 2022, China and the participating countries of the "the Belt and Road" have reached a construction and investment agreement totaling US $960 billion. Other statistics try to measure the total amount of loans or direct investment, but most statistics believe that the total amount of financial commitment of the "the Belt and Road" initiative is about $1 trillion, and the projects are distributed in about 150 countries. Sometimes there is no clear definition of which overseas projects belong to the "the Belt and Road" and which do not.
Ten years have passed, and this initiative is currently under pressure. In recent years, the Chinese government has provided billions of dollars in relief funds to poorer countries that are unable to repay the "the Belt and Road" loans due to the COVID-19 epidemic and rising interest rates. Chinese lenders have been criticized for delaying debt restructuring in Sri Lanka and Zambia.
The decline in loans to Africa has been particularly significant. According to a database of Chinese loans to Africa maintained by Boston University, Chinese banks issued less than $1 billion in new loans in Africa last year, compared to $8.5 billion in 2019.
Another challenge facing the Chinese government is the increasing number of people who are skeptical of the project, especially Western countries, whose excessive reliance on the Chinese economy has already made them uneasy. Italy is the only member of the G7 group of seven developed economies to join the "the Belt and Road" and is now seeking to withdraw.
Italian officials said that Italy's accession to the "the Belt and Road" has a specific goal: to promote exports to China; Italy's exports to China lag behind other European countries such as France and Germany. However, this goal has not been achieved, one of the reasons is the COVID-19, and the other reason is that successive Italian governments have blocked China's investment in sensitive enterprises.
Similar to Italy, Greece has tried to keep a distance from China after initially expressing support for the idea of "the Belt and Road". China's largest shipping company, state-owned COSCO Group, acquired a majority stake in the Greek port of Piraeus in 2016 and plans to turn it into an important gateway for trade between China and Europe.  
But after Piraeus' investment was deemed to have limited economic benefits, public and political enthusiasm for Chinese investment cooled. Greek officials have recently lobbied for the US government to invest in Greek shipyards to restrict China's foothold in Greece.
  A document issued by the State Council of China this month talked about the economic benefits of participating in the "the Belt and Road", including increasing trade and investment with China. This document lists some major projects, such as a railway connecting Laos and Yunnan Province in China, as well as some smaller projects, such as the "Luban Workshop" named after ancient Chinese carpenters; Nowadays, Luban Workshop teaches technical courses, including robotics, to non Asian people. This document describes how China hopes to promote deeper cooperation in many fields, including art, media, health, and finance.
The China Laos railway built by a Chinese company will be opened at the end of 2021. China hopes to promote Laos' foreign trade and provide an important route to overseas markets for China. The Wall Street Journal explored the changes and debt burden brought to Laos by this $6 billion project, and analyzed China's vision for the "the Belt and Road" initiative. Cover image source: JiangWenyao/ZumaPress
Linda Calabrese, a China expert at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a think tank in London, said that developing countries still generally accept China's economic development proposals. However, considering the widely reported economic difficulties of borrowing countries such as Sri Lanka, these countries have become more cautious in their specific methods of project financing.
She said, "People in these countries are far less worried about China than Europe or the United States. For them, China is just another country that can provide them with something
Some analysts said that an important part of the restart of the the Belt and Road Initiative is how China provides funds for the Belt and Road loans. According to data from Boston University, with some borrowing countries facing debt difficulties, loan disbursements from large lending institutions such as the Export Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank have decreased in recent years.
AidData, a research laboratory at William&Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, tracks China's overseas financial situation. Brad Parks, the executive director of the laboratory, said that other Chinese state-owned lending institutions are quietly increasing their lending efforts. These lending institutions often work with foreign banks to provide funding for infrastructure projects in order to diversify risks in the event of repayment issues.
For example, according to AidData's records, in 2021, Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China teamed up with Standard Chartered, Citibank, and International Finance Corporation, a subsidiary of the World Bank, to form a consortium to provide a $360 million loan for the development of a natural gas field in Iraq.
Parks stated that after being hit by non-performing debt, the Chinese government is actually outsourcing risk management to Western lending institutions.
He said that the Chinese government is trying to reduce the risks of the "the Belt and Road" initiative.