China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) registered its strongest year on record in 2025, reversing the perception that overseas engagement would remain subdued after the pandemic-era slowdown.
New data compiled by Griffith University and Shanghai’s Green Finance and Development Center (GFDC) put total Chinese “engagement” across BRI countries at $213.5bn in 2025, a 75 per cent rise on the prior year, measured through a combination of construction contracts and investment deals.
The GFDC breakdown suggests the rebound is not a single-sector story. It reflects a renewed willingness by Chinese state-owned and private firms to sign large contracts, particularly in energy and heavy industry, while also expanding upstream control over inputs that matter to advanced manufacturing and data-driven infrastructure. The 2025 figure comprises $128.4bn in construction contracts and about $85.2bn in investments. The same dataset records roughly 350 deals in 2025, up from the previous year’s total.
What changed was not only volume but deal composition. A key feature of 2025 was the reappearance of “megaprojects” — large, often politically-backed schemes that typically require host-government support, long timelines and complex financing structures. The GFDC report highlights, among others, the Ogidigben Gas Revolution Industrial Park in Nigeria, where China National Chemical Engineering was linked to construction contracts valued at about $24bn, and a major gas-related push in the Republic of Congo.
Energy dominated the year. Chinese energy-related engagement in BRI countries reached $93.9bn, the highest since the initiative’s launch. Within that, GFDC characterises 2025 as simultaneously more fossil-heavy and more active in renewables: oil and gas engagement rose to about $71.5bn, while green energy engagement reached a new record of $18.3bn across wind, solar and waste-to-energy projects, alongside additional hydropower activity.
This mix matters geopolitically. Fossil investments can lock in long-term supply relationships and infrastructure dependencies, while the renewables package aligns with China’s position as a major exporter of clean-energy equipment and associated industrial capacity. The GFDC data also shows record activity in technology and manufacturing linked to overseas data centres, batteries and hydrogen, suggesting that parts of BRI activity are moving closer to sectors associated with industrial policy and strategic competition.
Metals and mining were the other strategic centre of gravity. The GFDC report records $32.6bn of engagement in the metals and mining sector in 2025, a new high, and notes a surge in copper-related investments in the second half of the year, framed explicitly around data-centre and electrification demand.
The scale and spread of this activity sit alongside an established feature of China’s international economic posture: the country’s role as a leading official creditor. AidData, which tracks official-sector lending and credit arrangements, describes China as the world’s largest official creditor, while also noting that the terms and legal structures of many contracts are difficult to scrutinise without primary documents.
For recipient states, the trade-off is familiar. Chinese finance and contracting can deliver large assets quickly, often tied to Chinese firms, equipment and project management. At the same time, debt sustainability remains a persistent issue in parts of the BRI footprint, particularly where projects do not generate the expected foreign-exchange revenues. A 2025 Lowy Institute assessment warned of a rise in repayments to China falling due among the poorest countries, reflecting the maturing of earlier loan vintages.
Strategic risk is not confined to debt. US and allied analysts have long argued that some ports, logistics hubs and communications corridors created under the BRI umbrella can have “dual-use” relevance, even where commercial rationales dominate. That concern appears in US government research discussions of BRI-linked infrastructure, and it is one reason why screening of strategic assets has tightened across multiple jurisdictions over the past decade.
Europe’s experience illustrates the political sensitivity. Italy — the largest G7 economy to sign a BRI memorandum — chose not to renew its 2019 agreement, informing Beijing in December 2023 that it would exit the framework as the memorandum approached renewal. The decision did not end bilateral trade, but it signalled that participation in the BRI label had become a domestic and alliance-management issue, not simply a commercial one.
In aggregate, the 2025 surge indicates that BRI activity is again being used as a tool of economic statecraft. The GFDC methodology counts engagement across countries that have signed BRI cooperation documents, a universe it puts at around 150 countries by late 2025, and it records engagement across 89 BRI countries in 2025 for the deals it tracks. That breadth, combined with the sector mix—energy, minerals processing, logistics and selected high-technology assets—suggests an effort to build resilience in supply chains as global trade and investment volatility increases.
