“…With this aim in mind, in 2013 it launched the so-called Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), aiming at promoting economic connectivity between China and the countries involved in the initiative. 5 Importantly, the BRI should not be regarded as a single megaproject, rather as a continuously growing initiative with a large portfolio of projects for rail, road, sea, and airport infrastructure, power and water links, real estate contracts, and, more recently, digital infrastructure (Sielker and Kaufmann, 2020). In this sense, it is seen as the most ambitious and economically relevant initiative ever undertaken, comparable only with the Marshal Plan launched by the United States after the Second World War.…”