TEST BY FIRE

In 2013, when Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the Belt and Road Initiative, at that time people understood very little about what a shared future for all humanity meant. And they understood even less the vision that sought to unite without unifying, spoke of a moral leadership without moralizing, and conceived of a power based on partnerships and not alliances.

But the global South—countries that had been colonized or marginalized, people and nations that had been told they were in the waiting room of history—were in need of a fresh leadership and ideals. The new concept renewed hope.

Turning point

In the later half of the 20th century, the collective