"Five years have passed since China’s President Xi Jinping announced the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), originally called One Belt and One Road. One could argue that the BRI has become China’s most important geopolitical tool to build soft power and implement its plans, and its content and nature could be evolving over time (Dadabaev, 2018). With the massive financing that China is bringing to Belt and Road countries to build infrastructure, the recipients, especially the less-developed countries, should, in principle, view China’s grand plan very positively. In fact, the Belt and Road Initiative has officially included 661 countries. However, there is no systemic evidence of how successfully this project has been fulfilling its aims in the recipient countries and, more generally, globally. Empirical analyses have already quantitatively gauged the potential gains for the Belt and Road countries. For example, García-Herrero and Xu (2016) estimated how trade would be generated thanks to the improvement of transport infrastructure in the Belt and Road geographies. The authors found that gains are 6 percent for Europe and 3 percent for Asia, while the rest of the world suffers a 0.04 percent reduction in trade. A good example is Nepal. Massive Chinese infrastructure investments in Nepal aim to link the economic activities of China and India, providing new momentum for Nepal’s development (Shrestha, 2017). Initially, this initiative made Russia worried because of its effect on the Trans-Siberian Railway. However, two international transport corridors (Primorye-1 and Primorye-2) under the BRI have linked Russia with the Asia-Pacific region, providing a new opportunity for Russia to develop (Li, 2018). Similarly, Breuer (2017) shows that the BRI will bring benefits also to Africa through its massive construction scheme..."