The Belt and Road Initiative has been touted as a way for China to increase its global power and challenge industrialized democracies. Still, it has come at a cost for many developing countries. China's Belt and Road Initiative is a massive infrastructure investment program launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013 to expand China's global influence by funding roads, railways, ports, and power plants across four continents. While intended to expand China's influence, the Belt and Road Initiative has saddled poor recipient countries with debt from building expensive, low-quality infrastructure that often fails to benefit local economies as intended, making China the world's largest debt collector and raising questions about whether its new approach of debt relief and green investments can resolve the significant problems.
