Five months after Beijing’s freely controlled island, which Taiwan now calls its own territory, publicly endorsed BRI in November 2017 as the first Latin American nation.
China rejects criticism from European countries for the plan, saying that more than 100 nations have joined it, which will promote global development through new railroads, bridges, and ports.
However, it has been mired in controversy, with some lover countries bemoaning the high cost of tasks and struggling to repay debts. Under US tension over worries about Beijing’s economic approach, Italy withdrew from the action in 2023.
For US problems have long been applicable to some Chinese businesses operating close to the Panama Canal, including a Hong Kong-based company that built two ports at both of the US’s doors in the early 20th centuries and gave them over to Panama in 1999.
Two Taiwanese state-owned firms are individually building a fourth viaduct over one of the canal’s doors.