The BRI aims to accomplish a number of goals at once. These include enhancing economic exchange with Europe and the Middle East, securing a more benign strategic environment for China itself, and stabilizing Islamic central and South Asia—and all this across a vast continental landmass less susceptible to American strategic influence than maritime East Asia. China also hopes to build up new markets to help mitigate the consequences of being excluded from future economic opportunities in the United States and its closest allies.
