The "Belt" is supposed to consist of three land-based silk roads. The "One Road," actually, is on water, which is a Maritime Silk Road.

China's push to create new trade and infrastructure links through its "One Belt, One Road" initiative will be hampered by Beijing's reluctance to open up investment for foreign companies, according to experts.

The strategy spearheaded by President Xi Jinping seemed to be incompatible with China's preference for "one-way" globalisation and assertive policies in Southeast Asia, particularly on maritime routes in the South China Sea, experts said at the Oxford China Forum held in the University of Oxford over the weekend.

Spanning over 60 countries, this massive project will spread an interconnected network of rail lines, highways, pipelines and logistics zones from China to Europe, covering a potential market that includes more than half of the population, 75 per cent of the known energy resources, and 40 per cent of gross domestic product in the world.