In another quirk of Chinese language, the “One Belt” part of OBOR refers to the land routes while “One Road” covers ship traffic. Xi’an’s inland freight port intends to send goods through Kazakhstan to Europe, across the Himalayas to India and through Pakistan to North Africa.

“Some have interpreted that as maybe another kind of bipolar competition similar to the Cold War,” said Abraham Kim, director of the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana. “But the U.S. and China, as much as we talk about each other as competitors, our economies are very closely tied together. That’s different from the Cold War, where the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were isolated from each other. You can’t describe this as a zero-sum game.”

However, it is a game where the United States hasn’t exactly taken a seat at the table. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement that President Donald Trump abandoned was widely seen as a framework for the United States and Asian nations to counter-balance China’s economic dominance. With TPP gone, the One Belt/One Road initiative is the biggest game around.