"One of the storylines that ran throughout Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit to Myanmar in his current capacity was the inroads Beijing was hoping to make with respect to its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While the focus itself was not surprising, it nonetheless raised a broader question at play in the wider region: are key states getting more cautious in how they engage the BRI? Since China’s BRI first took off, there has been a near endless focus on the mix of opportunities and challenges it presents for various countries as well as how other major powers are responding to it But as I’ve argued before, a key part of that conversation, beyond what China wants or what the United States thinks and does, is how key regional states themselves are responding to the BRI. Getting a sense of regional reactions is challenging given the diversify of responses we have seen, the evolution of the BRI itself, which remains quite amorphous in some senses amid the periodic reports we see, and the relative availability of alternatives offered by other countries such as Japan. Indeed, regional engagement with the BRI is best seen not as a linear process, but a more dynamic one in response to changes in these variables and more..."