The U.S. and others should help developing countries solve their problems, rather than using them as a playing field in a geopolitical competition with China. Excessive competition will not lead to the better world that the American president says he seeks.

Australia’s outlier history as a “Western” nation situated in the Pacific means it’s caught in the middle of simmering global tensions between China and the U.S.

India and China have a long history of border disputes, which have heated up recently. Stacked interests between China, India, and Pakistan hold the region on a seesaw, and BRI and CPEC may benefit from the conflict and pandemic.

China's Belt and Road Initiative is being tested by COVID-19, as several host countries have requested debt relief. How China proceeds will determine the overall success of the initiative.

Due to Pakistan’s flawed policies, Iran has become the new favorite BRI country of China in the South Asian and Middle Eastern region.

Positive feedback is abundant about the Belt and Road Initiative and China’s motives for introducing it, suggesting that the negative attitude of the United States so far is unfounded.

The celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1 will be an exuberant affair, involving glitzy cultural events, an extravagant state dinner attended by Chinese and foreign luminaries, and a grand military parade in Tiananmen Square. And, at a time of high tensions with US President Donald Trump’s administration, it will be imbued with an extra dose of patriotic enthusiasm. But while China has much to celebrate, it also has much work to do.

The Belt and Road Initiative is slowly evolving from a mere label describing various ad hoc projects into a formal institution. The Second Belt and Road Forum underscores progress in creating multilateral architecture.

The second Belt and Road forum showed that despite persistent challenges, the initiative is an evolving one and will continue to gain international support. However, its success will depend on its ability to integrate and reconcile an increasing number of actors and interests.

Critics often claim that China is using its massive “Belt and Road Initiative” as a form of coercive “debt-trap diplomacy” to exert control over the countries that join its transnational infrastructure investment scheme. This risk, as Deborah Brautigam of John Hopkins University recently noted, is often exaggerated by the media. In fact, the BRI may hold a different kind of risk – for China itself.