Belt and Road Initiative is the main global growth engine over next decade

PROPOSED by China in 2013, "One Belt One Road", now renamed the "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI), is a global economic plan to create regional connectivity through infrastructure development and promote world trade and economic growth. It plans to connect 65 countries across Asia, and the Middle East to Europe by land along the historic Silk Route and another maritime route, down the Pacific and Indian Ocean and up the Mediterranean Sea. It is arguably the most ambitious economic project in the 21st century in terms of physical and economic scale and geographic spread.

The 65 countries make up 65 per cent of the world population, one third of the…