Isabel Hilton, an eminent authority on China and chief executive of chinadialogue.net, presents three programmes looking at contemporary China's relationships with the wider world.
The series looks at the Chinese government's efforts to win over "hearts and minds" with a sophisticated media strategy and at the efforts Beijing is making on its own account and in international organisations to "build a Chinese world".
In this first programme, Hilton focuses on the Chinese government's flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This claims to increase the economic security and power of the host nations whose infrastructure is improved by Beijing's inward investment and to benefit China too. The Chinese Communist Party calls it a win-win for both Beijing and the countries receiving Chinese investment. But is it?
Talking to leading experts on China, its politics and its economy, Hilton discovers the reasons for China's overtures to countries such as Pakistan, Cambodia and Kazakhstan and those further afield in Africa, Latin America and even Europe. If these countries get new ports and high-speed railway links as well as bridges and tunnels, what does Beijing want - and get - in return?
Earlier this year, President Xi Jinping said those involved in BRI projects should be China's ambassador but, Hilton asks, what exactly does that mean?
And although some projects in central Asia and Africa are already completed, they haven't always been completed to the expected standards. Elsewhere, the debt the recipient countries have taken on with China to fund their much-desired new facilities has proved so onerous for them that Beijing has needed to intervene to keep things on track.
So just how well is China's launch into the global big time going?

Producer Simon Coates Show less