BEIJING will inject over US$100 billion (RM474.11 billion) of new funding into its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), President Xi Jinping said today at a summit marking the vast infrastructure project’s 10th anniversary.

The BRI is a central pillar of Xi’s bid to expand China’s clout overseas, with Beijing saying it has inked over US$2 trillion in contracts around the world.

Proponents hailed it for bringing resources and economic growth to the Global South, but the initiative has also been slammed for saddling poor countries with enormous debt.

Xi announced today that key BRI lenders – the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank – would offer an additional US$100 billion in loans.

Both would set up financing opportunities of CN¥350 billion (RM226.97 billion) for BRI projects, he said.

An additional CN¥80 billion would be injected into the project’s official lending institution, the Silk Road fund, Xi said.

This week’s forum, attended by representatives of 130 countries, was the third major summit of its kind to be hosted by Beijing since the BRI’s launch in 2013.

Critics have long pointed to opaque pricing for BRI projects built by Chinese companies, with countries including Malaysia and Myanmar renegotiating deals to bring down costs.

Beijing has been forced to hand out billions of dollars in bailout loans to BRI countries in recent years to allow them to extend their loans and remain solvent, showed a 2023 joint report by the World Bank and other institutions.

China said this month BRI participants owe more than US$300 billion to the Export-Import Bank of China.

The initiative has drawn scrutiny for its massive carbon footprint and the environmental degradation caused by massive infrastructure projects.

The development of megaports, pipelines, railways and highways could render the Paris climate goals unreachable, researchers from China, the United States and the United Kingdom warned in 2019. – AFP, October 18, 2023.