Five years since it was announced, China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has yet to materialize on the ground as promised. According to Chinese officials, the BRI includes six economic corridors that will carry goods, people, and data across the Eurasian supercontinent. But a statistical analysis of 173 infrastructure projects finds that Chinese investment is just as likely to go outside those corridors as within them. The BRI appears to be less coordinated than Beijing hopes and some critics fear. Since President Xi Jinping announced it five years ago, China’s BRI has been equally captivating and frustrating for analysts. Its sheer scale demands attention. Spanning roughly 80 countries, it can claim to cover more than twothirds of the world’s population. It could include Chinese investments approaching $1 trillion, seven times what the United States spent under the Marshall Plan. It intends to strengthen hard infrastructure with new roads and railways, soft infrastructure with trade and transportation agreements, and even cultural ties with university scholarships and other people-to-people exchanges. In all these ways, when much of the West is looking inward, China is connecting with the world..."