As the People’s Republic of China marks its 77th National Day on 1 October 2026 and enters Golden Week, the occasion is more than fireworks, homecoming journeys and family reunions. It is a moment to take stock of a national story that, in a single generation lifetime, carried a wounded and impoverished country from humiliation and scarcity to industrial strength, technological ambition, and a distinctive claim to lead development among the nations of the Global South. National Day is therefore also a renewal of the pledge of national rejuvenation: that prosperity at home should be paired with partnership abroad.
Few modern states have compressed so much change into seventy-seven years. From the proclamation of the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949, China moved from widespread rural poverty to the eradication of extreme poverty, built the world’s most extensive high-speed rail network, became the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles, batteries and renewable-energy equipment, and emerged as a first-rank competitor in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, digital payments, shipbuilding, advance computing and modern infrastructure. The same civilization that gave marvels of inventions like paper, printing, the compass, gunpowder, paper money and silk is now helping to lead the digital revolution by making it inclusive, diverse safe, ethical and open source as this cutting-edge technology moves forward.
The Belt and Road and the Infrastructure Gap of the Global South
The Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, is the principal vehicle through which that outward offer has been organized. It began as a program of transport and energy connectivity across Asia, Europe and Africa and has since widened to ports, railways, highways, power systems, industrial parks, telecommunications, digital services, trade facilitation and financial cooperation. To date, China has signed BRI program with more than 150 countries and some thirty international organizations. Although no single treaty or official budget defines every project, independent tallies of construction contracts and investment now place cumulative engagement since 2013 well above one trillion dollars, with 2025 recording one of the strongest years of activity since the initiative began.
The BRI’s deepest appeal in the Global South is practical. Weak roads, unreliable electricity, shallow ports, thin rail networks and limited digital connectivity raise the cost of doing business and lock up many middle-income and low-income economies out of regional trade. Traditional development lenders have often been unable to meet the full scale of demand; private capital frequently avoids long-gestation projects with uncertain returns. China entered this space with large construction capacity, state-backed finance, engineering experience and a willingness to work with governments that wanted infrastructure first. Influence in this model is exercised not only through alliances but through corridors, standards, power plants, data networks, and long-term commercial relationships.
The results are visible across regions, even where they remain uneven. The China-Laos Railway opened a landlocked country to Chinese markets. Indonesia’s Jakarta-Bandung high-speed line introduced a technology few developing states had previously operated. Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway, Hambantota port in Sri Lanka with over two million TEUs capacity, and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti line improved access to the sea. Central Asian roads, pipelines and logistics hubs tightened overland links with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Ports from Piraeus to Gwadar, and energy systems ranging from hydropower and solar to transmission grids, have expanded the physical skeleton of South-South commerce. In 2025, Chinese construction and investment under the BRI again concentrated heavily in energy and, increasingly, in green power, mining and manufacturing, with Africa among the largest regional destinations.
The Digital Silk Road has added a layer beyond concrete and steel. Telecommunications, data centers, cloud services, e-commerce platforms and digital payments can give developing countries cheaper access to modern tools. The larger claim China advances on National Day is that the digital transformation of this century should not repeat the exclusionary pattern of the first industrial revolution, when colonial powers reserved the commanding heights of technology for themselves. Through jointly built institutions-the BRI, BRICS, the SCO, and the newly established World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO)-Beijing presents technology transfer, training and infrastructure as a shared public good of the Global South: roads and bridges, ports and transmission lines, hospitals and schools, and training for modern agriculture so that food security and industrial capacity can be built at home.
CPEC: The Flagship Corridor: No single BRI project has been more closely watched in South Asia than the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). First outlined in 2013 and formally launched in April 2015, CPEC was designed to connect China’s Xinjiang with Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast through roads, railways, energy plants, industrial zones and Gwadar Port. Its purposes were to ease Pakistan’s chronic power shortages, support industrialization, and turn the country into a regional trade and transit hub linking western China with the Gulf and the wider Indian Ocean. Pakistan has been a principal beneficiary not only of CPEC but of the wider Chinese institutional architecture: a BRI partner, a member of the SCO, and a founding participant in WAICO.
The headline envelope often cited for CPEC-more than sixty billion dollars in announced, planned and proposed projects-should be distinguished from what has been built. By 2026, official tallies reported that some forty-five projects worth about 25.6 billion dollars had been completed, with realized investment near 25.9 billion dollars and job creation above 260,000. Energy plants added more than 8,000 megawatts of generation capacity, together with more than 500 kilometers of new or upgraded roads and hundreds of kilometers of transmission lines. The Sahiwal and Port Qasim power plants, the Suki Kinari hydropower project, the Multan-Sukkur Motorway and the Lahore Orange Line metro stand among the most visible completed works. These are material gains for a country that once endured rolling blackouts measured in many hours a day. Bilateral trade has climbed above 25 billion dollars, and China has in recent periods accounted for a large share of Pakistan’s foreign direct investment.
Gwadar remains both the symbol and the working test of the corridor. China has supported port facilities, the New Gwadar International Airport-inaugurated in January 2025 with a substantial Chinese grant-the Eastbay Expressway, water and desalination works, and the Pak-China Friendship Hospital, which has treated hundreds of thousands of patients. Geography still favors the site: it sits near the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz and at the southern terminus of an overland route into western China. Commercial cargo volumes and free-zone occupancy have lagged early projections, and security, local employment and Pakistan’s fiscal constraints have slowed the leap from strategic location to thriving commercial city. CPEC 2.0, now framed around special economic zones, agriculture, minerals and information technology, is an attempt to move from hardware to livelihoods. The honest reading on China’s 77th National Day is therefore double: the corridor has changed Pakistan’s infrastructure map and energy balance, and it must still convert groundbreaking ceremonies into durable, inclusive growth.
BRICS, the SCO, WAICO and a Multipolar Development Order
The BRI does not stand alone. It is reinforced by a cluster of institutions in which China is a central, though not solitary, actor. BRICS now comprises eleven full members-Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia-together with a growing tier of partner countries. The group accounts for roughly half of the world’s population and about two-fifths of global output at purchasing-power parity, and it concentrates large shares of energy, food and strategic minerals. It does not speak with one voice, but it gives developing economies a forum for development finance and technology cooperation outside Western-led clubs. The SCO supplies a Eurasian security and connectivity layer that overlaps with BRI routes across Central Asia.
WAICO-the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization-adds the digital piece. China proposed it at the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and formally created it in Shanghai on 16 July 2026, when twenty-nine countries signed the founding agreement on the eve of the 2026 conference. The founders were drawn almost entirely from Asia, Africa and Latin America and included China, Pakistan, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Malaysia and Kenya; no G7 member joined. Signatories later rose toward three dozen. Headquartered in Shanghai and open to any sovereign state, WAICO’s stated objectives are to promote international cooperation on the development and governance of artificial intelligence so that it remains beneficial, safe, ethical and people-centered; to narrow the technology-access gap between richer and poorer nations; to encourage open-source scientific cooperation; and to work in line with the UN Charter. President Xi Jinping framed AI as a shared endeavor rather than a solo performance and pledged 5,000 training places for developing countries over five years, together with cooperation centers linked to ASEAN, the African Union and BRICS.
Leaving No Nation off the Superhighway: Infrastructure does not automatically produce prosperity. Roads and power plants create conditions for growth only when freight moves, local firms can compete, communities are consulted, and debt can be serviced from real economic activity. Some Belt and Road projects have suffered cost overruns or weak demand, and later phases have emphasized smaller projects, renewables, digital infrastructure and commercial viability. The proper test of the BRI and CPEC is whether farmers reach markets, factories keep the lights on, students gain skills, patients reach hospitals, and public finances remain sustainable.
Even with those caveats, the historical contrast China draws on National Day is difficult to dismiss. The first industrial revolution concentrated machinery, shipping and finance in a handful of imperial capitals and left much of Asia, Africa and Latin America as suppliers of raw materials. The digital and green transitions of this century could follow the same pattern, or they could be organized so that power, modern agriculture, ports, schools, clinics and digital highways are built where most of the humanity actually lives. That is the promise encoded in the Belt and Road for the Global South: not charity, but connectivity, energy and technology at the scale those societies have long said they need.
As Chinese families travel home for Golden Week and the flag is raised over Tiananmen Square for the seventy-seventh time, the celebration is both inward and outward. Inward, it honors a generation that sacrificed and rebuilt a nation. Outward, it restates Beijing’s claim to stand with the Global South in sharing the tools of the digital age, reducing poverty, and strengthening food and energy security. The BRI, CPEC, BRICS, the SCO and WAICO are the instruments of that claim. The engine of the Global South is no longer a slogan. It is a set of railways, ports, power plants, training programs and institutions-and Pakistan’s corridor is one of its most important working parts.
