Launched by President Xi in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative is at the heart of China’s internationalization strategy. In addition to the development of transportation infrastructure, trade and communication, it pursues financial cooperation with the rest of the world. Indeed, finance is the real lifeblood of the Initiative, the most innovative and disruptive part in its operational, institutional and political aspects. Through a network of offshore financial centers scattered across the continents, Chinese banks and stock exchanges are increasingly connected with foreign countries, while remaining within a financial system protected by controls on international capital flows, a regime of controlled exchange rate fluctuation and a publicly-owned credit sector. The network functions as a system of communicating vessels that pushes the circulation of the renminbi across borders and the “people’s currency” becomes an instrument of “reverse” globalization: it is not China that opens its financial sector to other countries, but the latter that welcome a growing Chinese presence on international markets. Along the BRI, finance flows smoothly and with it the soft power by which China is setting a new course in globalization.
