BRI's image being tarred by false claims

The huge production capacity formed in China during its rapid economic development over the past decades has been closely watched since the 2008 global financial crisis, and especially since China launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, with some Western media and scholars trying to establish a connection between them.

In February 2015, an article published in The Diplomat magazine claimed that China's Belt and Road Initiative not only aims to revitalize its economy by providing an outlet for its domestic excess capacity, but also aims to create a material guarantee for its effort to be a world power center through expanding its influence in major emerging markets or developing countries. Likewise, an opinion piece carried in The Financial Times on Oct 12, 2015, proposed that the Belt and Road Initiative is China's road to a new empire and its return to the center of Asia, while calling it a means for China to export its excess capacity. Many Western observers still view the Belt and Road Initiative as Beijing's means of shifting its excess capacity and influence outward.

But is there any truth in such arguments?