China’s Belt and Road Initiative: The rationale and likely impacts of the new structural economics perspective

China, a rising global power, proposed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013 as a development cooperation framework to fulfill its responsibility for assisting other developing countries. The initiative, based on China’s experiences and strength, focuses on infrastructure and is enthusiastically received by both developing countries and multilateral development institutions as infrastructure is the bottleneck for growth in most developing countries. Using a new structural economics perspective, this commentary discusses China’s rationale for proposing the BRI and analyzes the unprecedented opportunities that the initiative offers for partner countries to achieve their industrialization and modernization.