Overview

Meeting the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals is inextricably linked with the process of structural transformation. This project aimed to share experience from a country (China) with first-hand experience in the transformation process and an ambitious foreign economic policy based on cross-regional infrastructure connectivity and productive investment known as the Belt & Road initiative (BRI) with other countries in the Global South. The project identified limitations in government capacity in many partner countries – particularly in the policy areas of investment, trade, finance/debt, and technology – as potential roadblocks to the transformative impacts of the BRI (and of foreign direct investment more generally). It aimed to facilitate partner countries’ engagement with BRI-related projects by promoting a deeper understanding of China’s economic reform strategy, which was expected to enable selective policy adaptations that better reflect their own respective national development objectives.

Report Details