"The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s scheme to boost global connectivity and market integration principally through the export of its infrastructure development capabilities, is redefining Southeast Asia’s economic and security environment. Although the BRI risks the usual pathologies of large-scale infrastructure development—corruption, environmental degradation, social instability, and debt—it also promises an array of economic benefits to the region’s diverse economies, not least by addressing the region’s massive infrastructure deficit and potentially jump-starting industrialization in less developed countries there. Over the first five years of the initiative, more than $500 billion in BRI-related capital has flowed into Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam alone. Much of this capital comes from Chinese sources for developing transportation links. These links, like the pan-Asia railway network, will connect to Chinese cities—one of the many ways the BRI is weaving the Chinese and regional economies and societies together..."