President Xi Jinping's Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives have attracted worldwide attention with some experts and media outlets calling them China's version of the Marshall Plan. The "Belt and Road Initiatives", however, are drastically different from the Marshall Plan.

The Marshall Plan, or the European Economic Recovery Plan, was the United States' brainchild to prevent Europe from embracing communism and siding with the Soviet Union after World War II. In contrast, Xi's initiatives are aimed at promoting world peace by helping economies find new points of growth in order to improve people's lives and livelihoods. Thus the greatest difference between the two plans lies in policy purposes.

As an ideological plan aimed at curbing the then rising influence of the Soviet Union and consolidating the US' control over its European allies, the Marshall Plan was essentially one of antagonism. The "Belt and Road Initiatives", on the other hand, are aimed at propelling the common development of China and other countries and thus concern mutual prosperity. The initiatives neither seek to widen the sphere of China's influence nor interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbors.