Belt and Road

In 2034 — A Novel of the Next World War, the Belt and Road initiative is the lever for Chinese geopolitical projection that sets up the novel’s central alliance. The book imagines that in the mid-2020s, Iran signed onto the Chinese “Belt and Road” global development initiative to prevent financial collapse after the coronavirus pandemic, and that ever since, Iran “had helped project Chinese economic and military interests” — the seed of the new Sino-Iranian alliance whose scope drives the plot. It functions in the story as the economic instrument behind a broader strategic realignment, sitting inside the book’s larger Foreign Policy argument about American overreach and the limits of intervention against a centralized, infrastructure-strong China.

Context: The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China’s real-world global infrastructure and investment program, launched in 2013, financing ports, railways, energy, and telecom across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Critics describe it as a vehicle for extending Chinese economic and strategic influence; 2034 extrapolates that dynamic into a near-future geopolitical thriller.

Where this appears

• 2034 — A Novel of the Next World War — Iran’s accession to Belt and Road as the basis for the Sino-Iranian alliance driving the novel’s conflict.