Belt and Road Initiative at 10: Past Imperfect, Future Tense

In September 2013, in Kazakhstan, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ (SREB), an ambitious infrastructure initiative. A year later, while on a visit to Indonesia, he announced another connectivity initiative ‘21st Century Maritime Silk Road’, comprising mainly a sea route connecting China’s east coast ports to Europe via South-East Asia, South Asia and East Africa. Together, these two were called ‘yi dai yi lu’ in Mandarin, the literal translation of which is ‘One Belt One Road’ (OBOR). However, the world soon adopted the term ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) instead of OBOR.