I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn and here's what I'm watching: China's Belt and Road Initiative, BRI, on its 10th anniversary – where does it go from here? The BRI began as President Xi Jinping's strategic vision to connect China with Europe through Central Asia. It then expanded to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Today, with its vast array of projects and activities, the BRI exemplifies China's global economic ambition and growing footprint – the BRI is even said to represent China's foreign policy, tasked to achieve strategic goals, such as internationalizing the renminbi and securing natural resources from oil for energy to lithium for batteries.

According to a 2019 World Bank policy paper, the BRI is largely beneficial. First, global income increases by 0.7 percent (in 2030 relative to the baseline), which translates into almost half a trillion dollars. Second, globally, the BRI could help lift 7.6 million people out of extreme poverty and 32 million out of moderate poverty. Third, the initiative would lead to a modest increase in global carbon dioxide emissions.

Looking to the future, along with controlling and preventing risks, BRI projects will focus more on science and technology, and on industrial transformation, leveraging China's industrial and supply chain advantages. With its 41 major industrial categories, 207 intermediate categories, and 666 small categories, China is the only country in the world that has all industrial categories in the United Nations Industrial Classification. Moreover, China's technologies are now world-class in new energy vehicles, high-speed rail, offshore engineering equipment, wind and photovoltaic power, and power transmission and transformation. These provide opportunities to achieve high-level industrial cooperation with BRI countries.

President Xi emphasized that BRI projects should cultivate new growth areas such as health, green, and digital, promoting information sharing and capacity building in sustainable, low-carbon development. In digital, China calls for new business models of BRI cooperation: smart cities, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and e-commerce. Mobile payments, where China is a leader, can spearhead "going global" and enhance the competitiveness of "Silk Road e-commerce" – and thus augment China's international influence. As BRI projects continue to develop, becoming more technological and more targeted, new business opportunities will emerge, especially for private companies.

To improve project quality, state-owned enterprises, SOEs, will work harder to secure financing. In the past, SOEs were paid well and rapidly for working their BRI projects and the state policy banks took all the financial risk if the loans went sour. This China-side structure was a recipe for SOEs lobbying to make projects larger and more expensive, focusing more on short-term construction costs and less on long-term financial viability. BRI lending peaked around 2016 – the impact of which China continues to feel. Today, China's policy banks are more risk-averse and SOEs must become more risk-sharing.

One model is for SOEs to move away from working as riskless contractors and start developing projects under a "Build-Operate-Transfer" (BOT) structure. If the only way an SOE can recoup its investment and make a profit is by operating the project over many years – for example by collecting tolls on roads – SOE management will be exquisitely more careful in project selection and financial structure. A recent case is in Kenya, where the Chinese SOE built an expressway in Nairobi under a "public-private partnership" with the government.

It is estimated that in the next ten years, BRI countries will increase trade volume by $2.5 trillion, boosting economic globalization and reducing global inequalities. It would also facilitate geo-strategic re-alignment, reforming the international order. That's China's plan.

I'm keeping Watch. I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn.

Script: Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Editors: Xiao Qiong, Hao Xinxin

Designer: Qi Haiming

Producer: Wang Ying

Chief Editor: Li Shouen

Supervisors: Xiao Jian, Adam Zhu

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