China is building a vast ‘national ring road’ circling the country’s borderlands

China has outlined plans to build a massive road link snaking along the country’s land borders and coastlines – an ambitious project that could boost incomes in a string of remote regions, but also provoke geopolitical and ecological risks. The project is framed as an effort to boost economic development, social stability and national unity, with the more than 25,000km (15,500-mile) route set to run through several regions with large ethnic-minority populations – including Tibet and the Xinjiang