The chapter first identifies the puzzle of how China’s illiberal polity could convince many quarters of the world to support the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Chinese-led transformative, global infrastructural program. The next section investigates how China’s all-in commitment quickly launched the program but doing so at the expense of its sustainability. The following section discusses why credibility matters for the BRI and China’s broad foreign policy agenda. The last section considers how mounting sustainability challenges are transforming the dynamics of the BRI, forcing China to scale back its investment and ambitions. The conclusion highlights how China’s priority has changed from projecting Beijing’s commitment to securing the BRI’s long-term viability and what the policy shift means for the initiative’s future evolution.