As the world looks to the G20 for a prescription against the weak global economic recovery, the Belt and Road Initiative has become a new driver of international trade and investment.

The World Trade Organization warned in April that the outlook for global trade growth will remain sluggish in 2016, forecasting that global trade would grow by 2.8 percent this year, the same as that registered last year. This will be the fifth consecutive year that world trade volume has grown by less than 3 percent, which would be the longest continuous period of weak global trade growth in the past three decades.

While the picture for investment has been somewhat rosier, as global foreign direct investment flows grew 38 percent in 2015 according to the World Investment Report issued by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in June, that is still lower than the figure before the onset of the global financial crisis.