• China invited youth representative from 65 countries. The 65 are mostly developing countries. Many of the population sizes are below 2 x SG.
• most of the countries are somewhere below China in terms of economic or technological capabilities.
• No western-European country. Very few pro-west or pro-US countries (Israel, SG)
• Notably no Japan/Korea. Australia pulled out.
• Many of the countries are former colonies. National language (native) and official language can be different
• Russia population: 77% ethnic Russian

I feel China has excellent expertise and excess capabilities in infrastructure, but the poorer countries along the bent and the road are “starved” of infrastructure development. These infrastructure projects help China import raw materials and export manufactured goods. Without this new infrastructure, the existing trade networks were mostly created by other economic powers, and are insufficient for China.

When China or the colonial powers of the past century build a transportation facility for a developing country, the creator/debtor nation has a privilege using the facility though the facility legally belongs to the land it stands, the host country. China is not taking over the land to build it.

The propaganda is 100% positive, like win-win, but not in reality. There is surely lots of opposition.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2020/02/28/how-beijing-is-losing-support-for-its-belt-and-road-initiative is critical but not completely biased. There’s an audio version.

— naming .. I find OBOR more memorable than BRI. OBOR is closer to the Chinese version. I feel the two words translate imperfectly into English but let’s accept them. One has right to name one’s creations, esp. where substantial financial commitment is backing the words. I guess a lot of other initiatives by other national governments have more “correct” names but not backed by real actions. Xi’s two words are directly translated from Chinese, sounds a bit odd but paradoxically memorable.

• “Belt” … is short for the “Silk Road Economic Belt,” referring to the proposed overland routes for road and rail transportation through landlocked Central Asia.
• “Road” … is short for the “Maritime Silk Road”, referring to the Indo-Pacific sea routes through Southeast Asia to middle-east to Africa

— How official member countries? While Beijing boasts that the official list of Belt and Road participants is up to 137 countries, in most cases the criteria for “signing up” is a vaguely worded, non-legally binding MOU.