Gonna hitch my horse to the Belt and Road

The diplomatic event of the year (decade?) is kicking off in Beijing.

On Tuesday, after weeks of anticipation, the third Belt and Road Forum got underway.

Be there or be square: State media reports that 4,000 delegates representing 140 countries and 30-plus international organizations are attending.

Action stations: In recent days, Xi Jinping and his top deputies have had fast and furious meetings with foreign dignitaries, including:

• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán
• Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
• Chilean President Gabriel Boric
• Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev
• Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape
• Kenyan President William Ruto
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Xinhua has provided a roadmap of what to expect:

• In a keynote speech, Xi will outline a “new blueprint for high-quality Belt and Road cooperation”
• The conference will feature three “high-level forums” on connectivity, green development, and the digital economy, and several lower-level “thematic forums”
• A CEO conference

Xinhua also said to expect a tsunami of documents, including:

• A chair’s statement outlining the consensus of the forum’s participants
• A List of Multilateral Cooperation Deliverables
• A List of Practical Projects

Get smart: It’s hard to overstate how big a deal this forum is.

• Judging by attendance figures, China’s Belt and Road clearly still holds mass appeal, especially for the developing world.
• Nothing remotely similar is taking place in Western capitals.

Get smarter: The forum’s happening as China crystalizes its vision for an alternative world order.

• Expect the Belt and Road to get more overtly political as Xi tries to sell attendees on China’s three global initiatives.