The BRI’s First Decade: A Global Legacy of Concrete and Steel
A decade after its momentous launch, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) stands as one of the most ambitious global infrastructure and development projects in modern history. Conceived as a 21st-century Silk Road, the BRI has channeled hundreds of billions of dollars into a sprawling network of ports, railways, highways, and energy pipelines, physically reshaping landscapes and economic corridors across Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. However, as the initiative enters its second decade, a growing chorus of international relations experts, economists, and policymakers is advocating for a profound strategic evolution. The consensus is building: for the BRI to achieve its full potential and secure its long-term legacy, it must transcend its foundation of hard infrastructure and embrace the nuanced, yet powerful, tools of soft power.
This call for a pivot is not a rejection of the past but a strategic prescription for the future. The initiative’s first phase was necessarily focused on tangible assets—the “hard” connectivity that forms the skeleton of global trade. But now, experts argue, it is time to add the “soft” tissue: the cultural, digital, educational, and environmental linkages that foster genuine partnership, mutual understanding, and sustainable development. The discussion is shifting from building bridges of steel to building bridges between people.
From Ancient Silk Road to Modern Superhighways: A Recap of the BRI’s Origins
When Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the “Silk Road Economic Belt” in Kazakhstan and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” in Indonesia in 2013, the vision was audacious. It aimed to resurrect the ancient trade routes that once connected East and West, reimagining them with high-speed rail, deep-water ports, and fiber-optic cables. The stated goals were to enhance policy coordination, facilitate unimpeded trade, improve infrastructure connectivity, deepen financial integration, and foster people-to-people bonds among participating nations.
In the ensuing years, the BRI morphed from a concept into a global phenomenon. Signature projects became symbols of its reach: the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a multi-billion-dollar network of infrastructure projects; the Piraeus Port in Greece, transformed into one of the Mediterranean’s busiest container terminals under Chinese management; the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway, a critical economic lifeline for Ethiopia; and vast energy projects across Central Asia. These undertakings have undeniably spurred economic activity, reduced trade friction for many developing nations, and provided much-needed capital for infrastructure deficits that Western institutions had long overlooked.
A Dual Legacy: Celebrating Achievements, Acknowledging Criticisms
The achievements of the BRI’s first decade are monumental. According to official Chinese data, the initiative has encompassed over 3,000 cooperation projects and galvanized nearly $1 trillion in investment, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in partner countries. For many nations in the Global South, the BRI represented a tangible opportunity for development, offering a path to modernization that was previously inaccessible.
However, this rapid expansion has not been without significant criticism. Western observers and some recipient countries have raised persistent concerns. The most prominent of these is the accusation of “debt-trap diplomacy,” where critics allege that China extends unsustainable loans for large-scale projects to gain strategic leverage when nations inevitably default. While a number of think tanks have challenged the most severe versions of this narrative, issues of debt sustainability in countries like Sri Lanka and Zambia have kept the debate alive. Furthermore, early BRI projects faced censure for environmental degradation, a lack of transparency in procurement processes, and an over-reliance on Chinese labor and materials, which limited the economic benefits for local communities. These critiques, whether fully justified or politically motivated, have shaped the international perception of the BRI, often casting it as a purely transactional and geopolitical tool rather than a mutually beneficial partnership.
It is precisely at this intersection of grand achievement and persistent criticism that the call for a soft power infusion becomes most urgent. The experts advocating this shift recognize that ports and railways alone do not secure a legacy. Without local buy-in, public support, and a deeper sense of shared purpose, even the most impressive infrastructure can become a monument to foreign influence rather than a symbol of joint progress.
The Soft Power Pivot: Why Experts Advocate for a New BRI Chapter
The concept of “soft power,” famously coined by political scientist Joseph Nye, is the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce. It is the power of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. In the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, a soft power pivot means moving beyond the transactional language of loans and construction contracts to the relational language of shared values, cultural appreciation, and collaborative innovation. Experts believe this shift is critical for several strategic reasons.
Countering the ‘Debt-Trap’ Narrative and Building Trust
A primary driver for this strategic evolution is the need to counter the damaging “debt-trap” narrative. By investing in highly visible, people-centric projects—such as scholarships, joint medical research, cultural festivals, and vocational training centers—China can build a more positive and relatable story around the BRI. These initiatives generate goodwill and create constituencies of support within partner countries. When local students receive scholarships to study in China, or when Chinese doctors work alongside local medics to combat a disease, it creates a personal connection that transcends geopolitical rhetoric. This “people-to-people” connectivity is seen as a powerful antidote to suspicion, fostering a foundation of trust that hard infrastructure alone cannot provide.
Ensuring Long-Term Project Sustainability
Infrastructure projects do not exist in a vacuum. Their long-term success and profitability depend on a skilled local workforce to operate and maintain them, a supportive regulatory environment, and integration into the local community. A soft power approach directly addresses these needs. For example, coupling the construction of a new railway with the establishment of technical training institutes for local engineers and managers ensures the project’s viability long after the foreign construction crews have departed. Similarly, promoting cultural understanding can smooth over potential social frictions that arise from large-scale development projects. By investing in the human capital and social fabric of partner nations, the BRI can ensure its projects are not just built, but are also sustainable, valued, and successfully integrated into the host country’s economy and society.
Competing in a New Geopolitical Arena
The global landscape has changed since 2013. The United States and Europe have launched their own competing infrastructure initiatives, such as the G7’s “Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.” While these initiatives currently lag far behind the BRI in terms of scale and investment, they often frame their offerings around values like transparency, sustainability, and democratic principles—a direct appeal to soft power. For the BRI to remain the preeminent global development framework, experts argue it must compete effectively on this terrain. This means not just offering the best financing terms for a new port, but also demonstrating a commitment to green technology, promoting open digital standards, and contributing to global public goods like health and education. The future of global influence will be fought not just with concrete and capital, but with ideas, standards, and partnerships.
Key Arenas for BRI Soft Power Expansion
The call to integrate soft power is not merely a theoretical suggestion; it is already being translated into specific, action-oriented sub-initiatives within the broader BRI framework. Experts are pointing to several key sectors where this expansion is, and should be, most prominent.
The Digital Silk Road: Shaping the Future of Technology
Perhaps the most significant and far-reaching soft power dimension of the BRI is the Digital Silk Road (DSR). This initiative focuses on building the digital infrastructure of the 21st century, including fiber-optic networks, 5G mobile infrastructure, data centers, and e-commerce platforms. While this involves “hard” assets, its true power is “soft”: the ability to shape the technical standards, norms, and regulations that will govern the global digital economy.
By helping countries build their digital backbones, often with technology from Chinese giants like Huawei and ZTE, China is positioning itself at the center of future innovation. This extends to promoting its own models for e-governance, digital payments (like Alipay and WeChat Pay), and smart city development. The DSR offers developing nations a chance to leapfrog technological stages, but it also presents a profound opportunity for China to embed its standards globally. The battle for technological supremacy between the U.S. and China is, at its core, a battle of soft power—whose standards, systems, and vision for the internet will prevail?
The Health Silk Road: Building Goodwill Through Global Well-being
The COVID-19 pandemic threw the importance of global health cooperation into stark relief, and in doing so, it supercharged the Health Silk Road. Initially a smaller component of the BRI, it has now become a central pillar of its soft power outreach. During the pandemic, China engaged in extensive “mask diplomacy” and later “vaccine diplomacy,” supplying billions of doses to countries across the BRI network. Beyond the immediate crisis, the Health Silk Road involves long-term investments in public health infrastructure, including the construction of modern hospitals, the establishment of joint research programs on infectious diseases, and the training of medical personnel in partner countries. This form of engagement is deeply impactful, as it directly addresses the fundamental human need for health and security, generating immense goodwill and positioning China as a responsible global actor.
The Green Silk Road: Leading the Sustainable Development Charge
To counter early criticisms about the environmental impact of its projects, China has increasingly emphasized the Green Silk Road. This initiative focuses on promoting green and sustainable development, encouraging investment in renewable energy projects like solar and wind farms, and fostering cooperation on environmental protection and climate change. As the world’s leading producer of solar panels and wind turbines, China is uniquely positioned to export its green technology and expertise.
By championing sustainability, China not only addresses a key point of Western criticism but also aligns the BRI with the universal goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This reframes the initiative from one solely focused on extraction and construction to one that contributes to a sustainable future for the planet. This environmental leadership is a potent form of soft power, appealing especially to younger generations globally who are deeply concerned about climate change.
Cultural and Educational Corridors: Fostering People-to-People Bonds
The most traditional form of soft power lies in cultural and educational exchange, and this remains a cornerstone of the BRI’s evolving strategy. The proliferation of Confucius Institutes, which teach Chinese language and culture, continues, but the efforts now are much broader. China has massively increased the number of government scholarships available to students from BRI countries, bringing tens of thousands to study at Chinese universities. These students return home not only with a degree but also with a nuanced understanding of China, personal friendships, and professional networks.
Beyond academia, the BRI promotes cultural tourism, sister-city pairings, joint archaeological projects along the ancient Silk Road, and the translation and dissemination of media content. These efforts aim to increase familiarity with and appreciation for Chinese culture, history, and modern society. The goal is to replace foreign caricatures of China with a more complex, humanized reality, fostering an environment of mutual respect that can smooth the path for more sensitive economic and political negotiations.
The Road Ahead: Opportunities and Challenges of a ‘Softer’ BRI
This strategic pivot towards a more holistic, soft-power-infused Belt and Road Initiative is fraught with both immense opportunity and significant challenges. The successful navigation of this new terrain will likely determine the ultimate success and global acceptance of the project for decades to come.
The Potential for Deeper, More Resilient Partnerships
The greatest opportunity lies in the potential to build partnerships that are deeper, more resilient, and more balanced than those based solely on finance and construction. A BRI that helps a country educate its youth, secure its digital future, and protect its environment is one that becomes a genuine development partner, not just a foreign creditor. This approach can create a powerful network of nations aligned not by dependency, but by a shared vision of development and connectivity. It can transform the BRI from a China-centric project into a truly multilateral platform for global cooperation, increasing its legitimacy and appeal on the world stage.
Navigating Accusations of Ideological Export and Influence
The primary challenge, however, is one of perception. Efforts to promote Chinese culture, technology standards, and governance models can easily be perceived by critics, particularly in the West, as a form of ideological expansionism or “influence-peddling.” The line between cultural exchange and propaganda, or between technological assistance and digital authoritarianism, can be thin. For the BRI’s soft power strategy to succeed, China must tread carefully. It needs to emphasize collaboration and co-creation over top-down implementation. It must ensure that its educational programs promote genuine academic freedom and that its digital standards are open and interoperable. The success of its soft power will hinge on its ability to present these initiatives as offerings in a global marketplace of ideas, not as non-negotiable components of a package deal.
The Implementation Puzzle: From Grand Vision to Local Reality
Finally, there is the practical challenge of implementation. Measuring the return on investment for a new highway is straightforward. Measuring the long-term value of a scholarship program or a cultural festival is far more complex. Coordinating these diverse soft power initiatives across more than 150 participating countries, each with its own unique culture and political context, is a monumental task. It requires a level of diplomatic and cultural sensitivity that is far more demanding than negotiating a construction loan. Beijing will need to empower its diplomats, academics, and cultural representatives with the flexibility and resources to tailor their approach to local conditions, ensuring that these soft power efforts are received as authentic gestures of friendship rather than state-directed campaigns.
Conclusion: The Next Phase of Global Integration
The Belt and Road Initiative is at a critical inflection point. The first decade laid a formidable foundation of physical infrastructure, forever altering global trade routes and development landscapes. Now, as the project matures, the expert consensus is clear: the future of the BRI lies in its ability to build upon this foundation with a sophisticated and sincere application of soft power.
By expanding its scope to champion digital innovation, global health, green sustainability, and people-to-people connections, the BRI can evolve from an infrastructure project into a comprehensive platform for 21st-century global governance and integration. This pivot is a response to past criticisms and a strategic maneuver in a complex geopolitical environment. Ultimately, the world will be watching to see if this evolution can create a more inclusive, sustainable, and trusted framework for international cooperation—transforming the New Silk Road from a network of routes into a true community of shared interests and a shared future.
