Xi Jinping’s next overseas-lending revolution

China has plastered slogans on its loans for as long as it has lent overseas. The “Going Out” strategy in 1999 gave way to the “Community of Common Destiny” in 2011, which was swiftly overshadowed by Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road” vision two years later. Throughout this period, even as the slogans changed, one type of project dominated: overseas infrastructure funded by Chinese loans. The country’s banks have financed everything from the Mecca Metro, a railway in Saudi Arabia being built at a cost of $16.5bn, by the same construction firm that once laid tracks for Mao; to the start of Bandar, a shiny new development in the Malaysian state of Johor, an attempt to establish a rival to Singapore.