when Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013-only months into his first term-Beijing presented it as one of the century’s most ambitious global development plans.
It promised to reshape infrastructure across Asia, Africa, and Latin America with highways, ports, energy grids, and railways. The pitch was simple: China could build faster, cheaper, and at greater scale than the West.
Official data reinforced the sense of scale.
China’s Ministry of Commerce reported that in the first seven months of 2025, Chinese enterprises invested about $22 billion USD in non-financial sectors of BRI partner countries, up 24.7 percent year-on-year.
By November 2025, social media tallies counted 47 central state-owned enterprises participating in over 3,116 BRI-related projects-through investment, joint ventures, and construction.
These projects span three dominant categories:
* Major infrastructure: railways, highways, ports
* Energy development: over 60 oil and gas pipelines and power plants across 20+ countries
* Digital/industrial infrastructure: cross-border data systems, data centers, 5G networks, industrial parks
But a decade later, the picture is cracking.
Wage delays spread across multiple continents
A wave of wage-arrears scandals has surfaced across Asia,Africa,the Middle east,Eastern Europe,and Latin America. At least 14 countries now report that Chinese firms delayed paying workers for months-sometimes half a year or longer.
Alarmingly, many implicated firms are China’s flagship state giants: Sinopec, China Railway, China State Construction Engineering, CNPC, PowerChina, MCC, China Energy Engineering Corporation, CCECC, and others.
Analysts warn that the same competitive advantages Beijing boasts-“low cost, fast speed, flexible financing”-were built on compressed labor costs, weak oversight, and long subcontracting chains.
These structures made construction fast but accountability thin.
now that wage disputes are visible across continents, China’s reputation in developing countries is taking a hit. A key question is emerging:
is the China model still reliable?
Years of wage disputes set the stage for today’s belt and Road crisis
The BRI became official policy in late 2013 after Xi outlined land and maritime routes during visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia.
Within two years, cracks appeared. In 2015, more than a hundred Chinese workers in Belarus marched ten kilometers to the Chinese embassy after months of unpaid wages. It shocked local authorities and hinted that all was not well.
Worth a look