Silk Road’s investment hits $64bn

CHINESE President Xi Jinping said $64 billion in deals were signed at a summit on his Belt and Road Initiative and more nations would join the global infrastructure programme as he sought to ease concerns over the colossal project.

Xi and 37 world leaders wrapped up a three-day forum in Beijing with pledges to ensure that projects on the new Silk Road are green and financially sustainable following concerns about debt and environmental damage.

“We are committed to supporting open, clean and green development and rejecting protectionism,” Xi told journalists at the end of the forum, without taking questions.

His signature foreign policy aims to reinvent the ancient Silk Road to connect Asia to Europe and Africa through massive investments in maritime, road and rail projects – with hundreds of billions of dollars in financing from Chinese banks.

But critics say the six-yearold project is a plan to boost Beijing’s global influence, riddled with opaque deals favouring Chinese companies and saddling nations with debt and environmental damage.

The US, India and some European nations have looked at the project with suspicion. Washington did not send any representatives to the meeting.