Beijing pours cash into Belt and Road financing in global resources grab

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China’s flagship overseas infrastructure financing programme, the Belt and Road Initiative, increased by three-quarters to a record $213.5 billion in 2025, as Beijing sought to capitalize on wavering US influence around the world by pumping funding into development projects.

Giant gas and green energy projects dominated the boom in new investment and construction deals, according to research by Australia’s Griffith University and the Center for Green Finance and Development in Shanghai. Beijing signed 350 deals last year, up from 293, worth $122.6 billion in 2024.

The investment boom comes as tensions between the United States and China over trade and technology are disrupting supply chains and President Donald Trump’s military interventions are roiling global energy markets.

Christophe Nidobel Wang, a China energy and finance expert at Griffith University and author of the study, expects Beijing’s spending on the Belt and Road Initiative to grow further this year, driven by investments in energy, mining and new technology.

“Global trade and investment fluctuations are likely to stimulate further investment for supply chain resilience and alternative export markets for Chinese companies,” he said.

The Belt and Road Initiative, launched months after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, is the Chinese leader’s signature overseas development program, which seeks to deepen Beijing’s economic influence and trade ties with the developing world. It has made China the world’s largest bilateral creditor, with 150 partner countries in the Belt and Road Initiative.

The study found that last year’s figures brought the total cumulative value of Belt and Road Initiative contracts and investments since its launch to $1.4 trillion.

Growth in 2025 was driven by multi-billion dollar mega projects, including gas development in the Republic of Congo led by Southernpec, the Ogidigben gas revolution complex in Nigeria led by China National Chemical Engineering Corporation, and a petrochemical plant in North Kalimantan, Indonesia, led by a Chinese joint venture of Tongkun Group and Xinfengming Group.

“The mega projects are something we have never seen before,” Nidobel Wang said. He added that developing countries show greater confidence in Chinese companies to implement deals on a larger scale.

“Twelve years ago, these companies were much smaller,” he said. “Now as they get bigger, they can take on bigger projects – and they need bigger projects to grow.” A willingness to trust China, on the part of infrastructure planners and policy makers, is essential.

The value of energy-related projects last year reached $93.9 billion, the highest since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative and more than double the level of 2024. It included projects worth $18 billion in wind, solar and waste-to-energy projects, underscoring China’s leadership in clean technology.

Metals and mining also hit a record high of $32.6 billion, including the majority of spending on mineral processing abroad, highlighting how Beijing is using the Belt and Road Initiative to secure access to resources in the long term. This included an increase in investment in copper in the second half of the year. Supplies of the metal have shrunk thanks to the boom in data centers to fuel demand for artificial intelligence.

One “emerging pattern” is China’s strengthening of its engagement with countries whose resources can help it exclude the United States from its supply chain, said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank.

“China’s engagement abroad is increasingly focused on strategic sectors that support self-reliance, supply chain resilience and technology integration,” he said.

He added that the “lesson” that Beijing has drawn from the action taken by the United States this month in Venezuela and the threats against Iran is to “reduce exposure to external influence before the crisis hits.”

The scale of the Belt and Road Initiative has raised concerns about countries’ ability to repay the accumulated debt they owe to Beijing.

A 2024 report by the Congressional Research Service, a US government service, cited issues including unsustainable debt obligations and concessionary opportunities, ambiguous credit and loan terms, lack of reciprocal market access for Belt and Road Initiative partners, as well as investments in strategic sectors and infrastructure that threaten civilian and military interoperability.

CRS also said Western analysts and officials are finding it increasingly difficult to track and analyze the Belt and Road Initiative, describing it as a “comprehensive initiative” where projects can be linked “specifically or loosely to the effort” while the ability to track external financial activity is complicated by China’s use of internal financing and special-purpose investment vehicles.

Data visualization by Haohsiang Ko in Hong Kong