China’s One Belt, One Road: A Sign of Weakness?

Workers inspect railway tracks, which serve as a part of the "One Belt, One Road" freight rail route linking Chongqing to Duisburg, at the Dazhou railway station in Sichuan Province, China on March 14, 2019. Reuters

Commentary

After the end of World War II, the United States spent trillions of dollars containing the Soviet Union. But after the Cold War, it was discovered that the United States had overestimated the power of its 40-year nemesis. It turned out that the USSR’s economy was only about half the size that the CIA and other agencies had said that it was.