China's New Silk Road: New BBC Series

Here's a great new series from BBC about China's huge initiative, called One Belt, One Road, to open trade channels between itself and neighbors in both the east and the west.

It will include both land and sea routes, super fast trains on the land and huge container ships on the sea.

Why is China committing close to $1 trillion dollars to this initiative?  

According to The Economic World Forum,  one incentive is to improve the economies of poorer countries to the south. Improving these economies could help maintain China's economy.

For example, in the homeland of the Uyghurs in Kashgar, an ethnic Muslim minority that has often revolted against its marginal status, China has invested hundreds of millions with the idea that involvement in profitable trade will reduce violence.

One former US diplomat called the Chinese initiative, "potentially the most transformative engineering effort in human history," according to CBS News.

Here is a clip that reviews some of China's major projects around the world from the The Dailey Conversation like Africa's transnational electric railroad that runs 466 miles from Djibouti to Addis Ababa,  to a huge power plant in Pakistan.