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The BRI’s 2025 trajectory reflects a dual-track strategy—securing green-tech supply chains while reverting to state-led fossil fuel and extractive projects aligned with Beijing’s strategic priorities.
Image Source: Getty Images
Twelve years since its inception, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was expected to pivot towards sustainability, private sector-led growth, fiscally responsible engagement, and greater transparency, in line with the course corrections pledged at the Third Belt and Road Forum (BRF) in 2023. However, the BRI’s economic engagement in the first half of 2025 suggests a regression to the old playbook. Instead of smaller, greener, and more transparent projects, Beijing’s 2025 BRI engagement is marked by a resurgence of large-scale fossil fuel deals, resource-backed infrastructure contracts, and high-value investments in extractive and industrial sectors. The rhetoric of reform remains, but the material realities on the ground point to continuity rather than transformation.
Energy sector economic engagement dominated the BRI in 2025, with US$44 billion committed till July 2025.
This article offers a geoeconomic and strategic analysis of the BRI’s evolving engagement across economic sectors in the first half of 2025, assessing its alignment with the pledges made at the Third BRF in 2023 and the patterns observed in 2023-24. The article also places these developments in the context of the BRI’s earlier trajectory, before the Third BRF.
Between January and July 2025, Chinese economic engagement under the BRI reached US$124 billion (construction contracts and investments), crossing the full spectrum of similar engagement in 2024 (US$122 billion). This unprecedented half-year engagement was driven by deepening economic cooperation in the oil and gas, green energy, hi-tech manufacturing, green tech supply chain infrastructure, metals and mining, and digital infrastructure sectors. BRI’s 2025 engagement also suggests a geographic reorientation, with Africa and Central Asia emerging as regions of choice for Chinese private and state firms cooperating under the BRI framework. In the previous years (2013-22), South Asia, Africa and Southeast Asia emerged as top BRI destinations.
This geographic and sectoral reorientation reflects the urgency felt by the Chinese leadership to secure both conventional and non-conventional energy supply chains and to expand Chinese stakeholding across high-tech and green tech manufacturing supply chains. Central Asian and African BRI partners possess vast untapped energy and natural resource reserves, alongside a willingness for Chinese investments across critical economic sectors. Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms are investing in manufacturing facilities, resource extraction projects, and industrial hubs, thereby extending Beijing’s influence across the entire supply chain—from raw material extraction and processing to final production.
However, China’s push to embed itself across the green energy supply chain was evident in BRI investments in technology, manufacturing, and metals.
Energy sector economic engagement dominated the BRI in 2025, with US$44 billion committed till July. However, despite being the greenest BRI energy sector engagement to date, fossil fuels continued to dominate the initiative’s portfolio. Flagship deals included Sinopec’s USD$3.7 billion refinery in Sri Lanka and a US$20 billion gas-processing complex in Nigeria, signalling a return to state-dominated, outsized projects in conventional sectors. Green energy saw a modest rise, with US$9.7 billion committed in wind, solar, and hydropower projects (collective capacity of 11.9 GW). Coal also persisted, attracting US$1.58 billion in mining-related contracts.
Major Sectors of BRI’s Economic Engagement (January–July 2025)
| Sector | Engagement Value (US$ Billion) |
| Gas | 23.3 |
| Oil | 6.9 |
| Green Energy (RE) | 9.7 |
| Coal | 1.58 |
| Technology and Manufacturing | 23.2 |
| Metals & Mining | 24.9 |
| Transport & Connectivity | 15.0 |
| Total Sectors: 7 | Total amount: 104.58 |
Source: China Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Investment Report 2025 H1
However, China’s push to embed itself across the green energy supply chain was evident in BRI investments in technology, manufacturing, and metals. Tech and manufacturing flows doubled to US$23.2 billion, focused on electric vehicles (EVs), battery production, and solar component manufacturing. Key deals included CALB’s US$2.1 billion battery plant in Portugal and Xinyi’s US$0.7 billion solar glass facility in Egypt. Metals and mining engagement surged to US$24.9 billion, with Kazakhstan receiving US$19.5 billion for aluminium and copper projects. Roughly 60 percent of funding targeted raw extraction, supporting upstream green tech inputs. Transport engagement plateaued at US$15 billion, as China’s strategic focus tilted from traditional infrastructure to supply chain control.
Mid-2025 data for BRI’s economic engagement show a connectivity initiative that is far from moribund, contrary to frequent Western portrayals. Instead, China appears to have doubled down on infrastructure diplomacy, deepening engagement in the energy, technology, manufacturing, and metals and mining sectors. BRI’s 2025 engagement also draws the curtains on an arc of reforms initiated in 2023, during the third BRF. Beijing institutionalised reforms by promoting green and digital projects that would be ‘small and beautiful’ and financially sustainable. The Chair’s Statement also included pledges on debt sustainability and debt restructuring for partner nations, increased private sector involvement, and deeper collaboration with multilateral institutions.
To Beijing’s credit, 2023 and 2024 saw certain aspects of the promised reforms being implemented. Green-tech and energy-related economic engagement saw a significant uptick. In 2023, renewable energy and transmission projects reached a record US$7.9 billion, while investment in EV and battery supply chains exceeded US$8 billion. This momentum continued in 2024, with green energy commitments rising to US$11.8 billion, reflecting growing Chinese interest in clean-tech leadership and upstream resource control. The private sector also played a larger role, overtaking state-owned BRI players in 2023 — accounting for 52 percent of all commitments made — and maintaining a 48 percent share in 2024.
These shifts reflect that the BRI operates and evolves in tandem with the strategic priorities of China’s economic foreign policy.
Yet, these reformist gains were overshadowed by a resurgence of conventional BRI practices between 2023 and 2025. Oil and gas deals surged to US$11.75 billion in 2023 and reached US$24.3 billion in 2024, eclipsing green engagement. Strategic sector megadeals reached US$12.7 billion and US$21.25 billion in 2023 and 2024, respectively. State-owned enterprises reasserted control in 2024, reversing private participation gains. Notably, construction remained 95 percent state-led in both years. Progress on debt sustainability stalled — no major write-offs or restructuring frameworks were implemented. By early 2025, the BRI had regressed to its early model, marked by large-scale extraction and industrial manufacturing projects across oil, gas, coal, and critical minerals. These projects were increasingly concentrated in Central Asia and Africa and were dominated by SOEs financed through state banks. Together, these trends served to dilute the credibility of the BRI’s promised pivot.
These shifts underscore how the BRI operates and evolves in tandem with the strategic priorities of China’s economic and foreign policies. The BRI’s 2025 push aligns with Beijing’s domestic economic priorities: energy security, offsetting domestic overcapacity in sunrise sectors, securing access to upstream green-tech and green energy supply chains, and building alternative trade routes to reduce dependency on legacy routes in an international order marked by conflict, geopolitical fragmentation, and rising trade volatility. The mixed reform arc of 2023 and 2024, alongside 2025’s strategic regression, reinforces the idea that the BRI has always served as a framework for advancing Beijing’s strategic priorities and economic heft. The BRI is, above all, an initiative that shapes an external environment conducive to China’s domestic economic growth.
In the BRI’s second decade, the engagement pattern suggests that reform will remain selective, tactical, and subordinate to Beijing’s broader strategic imperatives. The 2025 resurgence of state-led, resource-intensive projects highlights the initiative’s role as a tool for managing domestic economic pressures and projecting geopolitical influence. Yet, the growing footprint in green-tech and advanced manufacturing signals a parallel ambition: to dominate future-oriented supply chains even as conventional engagements persist. This dual-track approach may become the new BRI norm, which balances the imperatives of energy security and industrial expansion with calibrated investments in emerging sectors. It also enables Beijing to project economic power while hedging against rising global trade volatility and geopolitical fragmentation. Going forward, the BRI will further entrench itself as a tool for advancing Beijing’s economic and strategic priorities in a fragmented global political and economic order. While this approach may serve China’s national objectives effectively, it risks undermining the BRI’s credibility as a genuine global development partnership.
Prithvi Gupta is a Junior Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Prithvi Gupta was a Junior Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation’s Strategic Studies Programme. He worked out of ORF’s Mumbai centre, and his research focused ...
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