Executive Summary
This study analyzes China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a central component of its foreign security strategy, assessing its achievements and challenges over a decade. The BRI aims to enhance China's global influence, secure strategic routes, and shape a favorable geopolitical landscape. However, it faces significant challenges including strategic competition, concerns over "debt-trap diplomacy," and project sustainability issues.
Why It Matters
This document is crucial for defense and geopolitical analysts as it details how China leverages the Belt and Road Initiative to advance its global foreign security strategy, including military and semi-military objectives, and the resulting strategic competition with major powers.
Key Takeaways
- China uses the BRI to achieve foreign security objectives, including securing strategic maritime routes and establishing military/semi-military presence through port investments.
Source evidence · PDF page 12
China has significantly increased investments with a primary focus on accessing and controlling strategically important seaports for both military and semi-military purposes, specifically efforts to invest in military bases and ports through the String of Pearls strategy extending from Eastern China to Africa, including Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, Myanmar’s Coco Island and Kyaukpyu Port, Bangladesh’s Chittagong Port, Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port, the Maldives’s Male Port, Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, Khartoum Port and Port Sudan in Sudan, as well as Bagamoyo Port in Tanzania (Huang, 2018).
- The BRI has intensified strategic competition, prompting countermeasures from the US and its allies, such as the Quad Infrastructure Partnership, to counterbalance China's growing influence.
Source evidence · PDF page 20
In this context, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) comprising the US, India, Japan, and Australia is identified as a multilateral mechanism aimed at containing the expansion of China’s geopolitical influence and power in the Indo-Pacific region (Hung et al., 2025).
- Participating countries face risks like "debt-trap diplomacy" and environmental concerns, while China's enterprises encounter financial and operational challenges within BRI projects.
Source evidence · PDF page 21
The primary concern centers on the possibility of falling into so-called “debt-trap diplomacy” through loans from Chinese-led financial institutions such as AIIB, NDB, and SRF. Although the initial preferential terms offered to less developed countries appear attractive, the operational mechanisms of these financial institutions have raised serious concerns about transparency and governance, potentially pushing low and middle-income countries into insolvency, which could pose risks to the national security of developing countries participating in the BRI (Xiaojun, 2023).
Strategic Relevance
The BRI is a core instrument of China's grand strategy to reshape the global order, expand its geopolitical influence, and secure critical resources and trade routes, directly impacting international security dynamics and power balances.