Drawn, Financed, Spoken

Xinhua's 2014 “New Silk Road” map, redrawn in real coordinates over the infrastructure that Chinese state lenders and donors financed abroad from 2000 to 2021, and over what China's provinces said about the Silk Road in early 2014.

Projects in view, 2000–2021

Compare the years before and after the Belt and Road was proposed in 2013.

–projects shown

–known dollars, constant 2021 US$

–of known dollars within 500 km of Xinhua's route

–of known dollars outside the edge of Xinhua's map

Drawn · Xinhua, May 2014

Land route (red in Xinhua's original)

Sea route (blue in Xinhua's original)

City pin on the launch map, 8 May 2014

City pin added by 28 May 2014

Edge of Xinhua's map image

Show Xinhua's original image0%

Financed · AidData GeoGCDF 3.0

$1bn or more

$100m to $1bn

Under $100m, or no amount reported

Line or shape: precise footprint at least 0.35° across, such as a railway

Dot size shows the committed amount (constant 2021 US dollars). Point to a country for its committed total.

Filter by sector and by year of commitment:

Transport Energy Other infrastructure

20002021

Spoken · 2014 provincial reports

Shade provinces by Silk Road mentions

None12–34–67+

Mentions of 丝绸之路 or 丝路 (Silk Road) and 一带一路 (Belt and Road) in each 2014 report. All uses counted, including heritage and tourism. Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan not covered.

After 2014: mean mentions per report, all 31 provinces, 2013–2026. Click a province for its own years.

Selected

Nothing selectedClick a project, a Xinhua city pin, a Chinese province, or a country.

Sources

Route and pins: Xinhua News Agency, 图解丝绸之路, in 新丝路·新梦想 (May 2014), image archived by the Internet Archive on 28 June 2014. Georeferenced and traced by the author.

Projects: AidData, GeoGCDF v3.0.1 (Goodman et al. 2024), ODC-By. Footprints © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Projects flagged as infrastructure only.

Provinces: government work reports of 31 provincial-level governments, 2013–2026 (434 reports; the map shades 2014). Boundaries: Natural Earth, which shows de facto lines.

Map by Brian Zhou for EASTD 196, Harvard, October 2026. Built with deck.gl, with AI assistance (Claude, Anthropic).

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