Abstract
China’s last 40 years of development became a unique phenomenon in the economic history. This country, classified in the late 1970s as one of the world’s poorest economies, has transformed into the largest in the world, focused to change the global status quo. One Belt One Road initiative seems to be in line with these geopolitical aspirations. This project, called now the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), brings together countries with different levels of development and different levels of Chinese investment expectations. The aim of this research is to compare countries belonging to the BRI project to aggregate them into coherent groups in terms of socio-economic development, in order to identify development gaps between China and these countries. Evaluation is provided for years 2004 – 2018 by constructed vector synthetic measures with China as a pattern. The research shows that China still ranks as an average developed country in terms of socio-economic measures, and China’s global aspirations will be financed at the expense of this development.