Findings

Congress makes the following findings: (1) The BRI, enshrined in the CCP’s constitution, is a comprehensive, long-term economic development strategy founded by General Secretary and President Xi Jinping to link regions worldwide through multibillion infrastructure projects. The CCP utilizes the BRI’s informal framework as a vehicle to establish a Sinocentric world order based on its authoritarian model of governance. (2) The BRI poses immediate and long-term risks to the national security, economic security, and international influence of the United States and our partners by giving the PRC the ability to project power more widely in geostrategic regions such as the Indo-Pacific. The BRI, covering countries representing over half of the world’s population and over one-third of global economic output, seeks to pull nations into China’s geopolitical orbit. In its second decade, the BRI’s long-term risks have begun to materialize in cases such as Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port debt restructuring and Pakistan’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor cost overruns, while Italy’s December 2023 withdrawal demonstrates that allied coordination can reverse BRI accession. (3) Although the United States Government has taken steps to respond to the BRI, including through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, the reauthorization and expansion of the United States International Development Finance Corporation under the DFC Modernization and Reauthorization Act of 2025, and the America First Investment Policy memorandum, the United States has not yet articulated a single, integrated, government-wide strategy to counter the BRI, leaving Beijing room to leverage its regional inroads worldwide through the BRI and other PRC-alternative institutions to achieve global preeminence. (4) The United States should not underestimate the significance of the BRI and establish a coherent, government-wide strategy that effectively seeks to counter China’s economic and political scope and influence through the BRI.