I enjoy seeing new and impressive infrastructure projects and have enjoyed watching documentaries and reading books on China's Belt and Road Initiative. I was surprised to see the project was somewhat controversial with respect to their intentions so I read more about their economic and commercial goals in funding these projects. The author is a Chinese professor who has a great deal of experience in following their economy. In reading this you get the Chinese perspective of what they hope to gain by all this economic activities. The author gives a honest opinion of what this will mean for China's economic standing in the world and discusses this effort in some detail. Its not my perspective but it is nice to read an honest observation from a USA competitor.
I have been impressed with the amount of and advanced architecture and engineering of the recent buildings and infrastructure in the Asian and Arab areas of the world which is starting to make American cities look dated. One of the major subjects that is not covered in the book is how and whether all these countries which are receiving all this aid will ever be able to increase their economies to pay for all this building. I imagine that story will be covered in future studies and writings.

