Launched by President Xi in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative is at the
heart of China's internationalization strategy. In addition to the
development of transportation infrastructure, trade and communication,
it pursues financial cooperation with the rest of the world. Indeed,
finance is the real lifeblood of the Initiative, the most innovative and
disruptive part in its operational, institutional and political aspects.
Through a network of offshore financial centers scattered across the
continents, Chinese banks and stock exchanges are increasingly connected
with foreign countries, while remaining within a financial system
protected by controls on international capital flows, a regime of
controlled exchange rate fluctuation and a publicly-owned credit sector.
The network functions as a system of communicating vessels that pushes
the circulation of the renminbi across borders and the "people's
currency" becomes an instrument of "reverse" globalization: it is not
China that opens its financial sector to other countries, but the latter
that welcome a growing Chinese presence on international markets. Along
the BRI, finance flows smoothly and with it the soft power by which
China is setting a new course in globalization.