How many countries are candidates for Belt and Road? Many numbers have been bruited about—up to 131. But Chinese officials go out of their way to say that there is no specific number, that instead, as one official put it, Belt and Road “is not a geographic concept. It’s about development, about strategically important projects that are financially sound.” Eastern and Central European countries, some of them members of the European Union, have aligned with it, as have Italy and Greece.
