The old Silk Road underpinned China’s golden age more than a thousand years ago, when the Tang Dynasty’s territorial expansion, cultural supremacy and economic power — with 58 per cent of global gross domestic product — were at their zenith.
This month, Beijing hosts a lavish international conference to showcase President Xi Jinping’s One Belt and One Road initiative, an ambitious project intended to recreate the Silk Road.
But five or 10 years from now, will this month’s event be remembered as a step in the next stage of globalising China’s economy, or as a huge white elephant that left an enormous amount of wasted resources strewn along its path?