In 2013 China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), including in Indonesia a “Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road (Road)” that crosses the Indian Ocean (IO) and continues up into the Mediterranean. For Africa this produced an early Eastern focus for which there has been no...

In 2019 Foreign Policy described China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as “the most talked about and least defined buzzword of this decade”. Given that confusion and the importance of leader political speeches in China - especially those of current President Xi Jinping - it is surprising...