Welcome to the Belt and Road Pandemic

In an unfortunate turn of translation, China’s Xinhua News Agency described President Xi Jinping’s trip on Jan. 19 to Yunnan province with these words: “The amiable image of the people’s leader moved through the crowd and through the screen, infecting everyone.” It was a poor choice of words in a nation in the grips of an infectious respiratory disease epidemic.

But, in another way, the phrasing was entirely apt. China’s president isn’t literally responsible for infecting anyone, but his political agenda may turn out to be a root cause of the epidemic. By making the Belt and Road Initiative endeavor—a multitrillion-dollar program to expand Chinese trade and infrastructure around the world—the centerpiece of his foreign and economic policy, Xi has made it possible for a local disease to become a global menace.