Major Cracks Appear in China’s Belt and Road Initiative
From billion-dollar construction flaws to scrapped projects: Is the Chinese Communist Party’s Belt and Road wearing out already?
“SAN LUIS, Ecuador — Built near a spewing volcano, it was the biggest infrastructure project ever in this country, a concrete colossus bankrolled by Chinese cash and so important to Beijing that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, spoke at the 2016 inauguration,” began Ryan Dube and Gabriele Steinhauser for the Wall Street Journal last week.
“Today, thousands of cracks have emerged in the $2.7 billion Coca Coda Sinclair hydroelectric plant, government engineers said, raising concerns that Ecuador’s biggest source of power could break down,” wrote Dube and Steinhauser.
The fault lines spreading in San Luis, Ecuador, aren’t the only cracks to appear in China’s vast Belt and Road Initiative in recent weeks.
“Uganda has turned to Turkey to build its railway after China talks fell through,” reported Faustine Ngila on January 13, 2023, for Quartz.
The China Harbor Engineering Company (CHEC), under the auspices of China’s ambitious global Belt and Road Initiative, will not be building a 273-kilometer railway from Uganda’s capital city to its border with neighboring Kenya, after all.