In 2013, China’s leader Xi Jinping announced a campaign for national rejuvenation. The One Belt One Road initiative, or OBOR, has become the largest infrastructure program in history. Nearly every Chinese province, city, major business, bank, and university has been mobilized to serve it. All told, China has spent hundreds of billions of dollars overseas building ports and railroads, laying fiber cables, and launching satellites. Now it is refocusing this project for the 21st century, pivoting into vaccines, digital services, and more.
Using a trove of sources in Chinese and four other languages, Eyck Freymann argues that infrastructure projects are just a sideshow. OBOR is fundamentally a campaign to restore an ancient model in which foreign emissaries paid tribute to the Chinese emperor, offering gifts in exchange for political patronage. Xi sees himself as a sort of modern-day emperor, determined to restore China’s past greatness.
Many experts assume that Xi’s nakedly neo-imperial scheme couldn’t possibly work. Freymann shows how wrong they are. China isn’t preying on victims, Freymann argues. It’s attracting willing partners—including Western allies—from Latin America to Southeast Asia to the Persian Gulf. Even in countries where OBOR megaprojects fail, Freymann finds that political leaders still want closer ties with China.
Freymann tells the monumental story of Xi’s project on the global stage. Drawing on groundbreaking archival research, interviews with senior officials, and on-the-ground case studies from Malaysia to Greece, Russia to Iran, Freymann pulls back the veil of propaganda about OBOR, giving readers a page-turning world tour of the burgeoning Chinese empire, a guide for understanding China’s motives and tactics, and clear recommendations for how the West can compete.
Reviews and Blurbs
Eyck Freymann is our guide, and his beautifully written book escorts us by land and sea to Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Greece, and beyond . . . As the Guide Michelin notes when it awards three stars: this book “is worth a special journey.”
William C. Kirby — Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
“The author succeeds in providing both a big-picture understanding and a detailed depiction of what OBOR represents to China and potentially to the world...Freymann’s monograph provides a public service.”
Kathleen A. Walsh—Associate Professor of National Security Affairs, U.S. Naval War College. Full review here.
“A brilliant book—lucid, sober and thoughtful in its conclusions, it deserves to be read widely. Eyck Freymann cuts through the hype and brings light, not heat, to understanding how China combines diplomacy and economics. With a huge range of sources, he shows that One Belt One Road is likely to be neither a new Chinese empire nor simply a trade network. Essential reading.”
Rana Mitter OBE FBA — Director, University of Oxford China Centre
“Eyck Freymann sheds fresh light and understanding on the most important competition of this century. With One Belt One Road, the author has earned his place as one of the foremost experts on the economic strategies of the Chinese Communist Party. In this impeccably researched and well written book, Freymann corrects misunderstandings and provides coherent recommendations that, if implemented, will preserve America’s and the free world’s competitive advantages.”
LTG H.R. McMaster (Ret.) — Former United States National Security Advisor
“Freymann cuts through the Western narrative about One Belt One Road to show that China is more often successfully attracting willing partners than preying on victims—a provocative conclusion that requires Western policymakers to think again.”
Graham Allison — Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
“Freymann’s expertly researched and accessible work helps clarify misconceptions and provides a coherent set of recommendations for policymakers. Required reading.”
Paul Haenle - Former Director for China, United States National Security Council
“The most sophisticated and illuminating piece of work on the Belt and Road.”
Tom Miller — Author of China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building along the New Silk Road
“The definitive study of the Belt and Road.”
Niall Ferguson — Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford
“A nuanced, and well informed, argument …One Belt One Road is a good book for those who want to take their bearings on the Belt and Road. It has no heroes or villains, but a good overview of the benefits and downside of the initiative as it unfolds.”
Kerry Brown — Director, Lau China Institute, Kings College London and author of CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping. Full review here.
“In his outstanding book, China scholar Eyck Freymann deciphers Beijing’s opaque plan and jumbled pronouncements…Some observers have compared One Belt One Road to a ‘Trojan Horse,’ depicting it as a highly strategic enterprise for expanding China’s dominance. Freymann, by contrast, sees Beijing acting haphazardly and pragmatically. But that does not make the project as a whole any less threatening to U.S. and allied interests.”
Patrick Cronin — Asia-Pacific Security Chair, Hudson Institute. Full review here
“Firmly documented, well-argued and worth reading.”
Peter Gordon — Editor, Asia Review of Books. Full review here