As a special bonus, we’re bringing Benchmark listeners the first peek at a four-part series on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. President Xi Jinping calls it the project of the century: a massive infrastructure spending program that hopes to enhance trade and connectivity throughout Eurasia. Through a networks of projects that span the transportation, finance, telecom and power industries, the economic corridors and maritime roads that span Eurasia could fundamentally change the dynamics of global business. In the first of four episodes, we find out what Belt and Road is, and why it’s been described as everything from “an exercise in empire building” to “a new world order.”

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