"China’s New Silk Road: Navigating the organized crime risk" 5 May 2021

[...] Countries participating in the BRI, and especially those featuring developing and emerging economies, are faced with a common dilemma linked to development projects. [...] Yet, criminal involvement is a little studied aspect of the BRI, both in policy and research circles. This is problematic: failing to acknowledge that development and trade create vulnerabilities in contexts where governance and regulatory capacity is weak, crime levels are high and illicit markets are well established opens up the risk of systematic criminal exploitation.

To help fill that gap, the GI-TOC’s report ‘China’s New Silk Road: Navigating the organized crime risk’ – the first mapping of the convergence between BRI infrastructure and criminal flows – takes a close look at existing and potential criminal vulnerabilities in South East Asia as well as central and eastern Africa and identifies areas where BRI projects coincide with trafficking routes for narcotics, illicit environmental commodities and people. The report is accompanied by an extensive data annex and an interactive digital tool mapping the BRI’s criminal vulnerabilities and allowing users to visualize where and how specific infrastructural developments currently facilitate illicit trade or are likely to do so in the future. [...]