{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,27]],"date-time":"2026-08-27T05:17:52Z","timestamp":1787807872913,"version":"build-2784847793"},"reference-count":24,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,27]],"date-time":"2026-08-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1787788800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Big Data"],"abstract":"<jats:p>BRI DataLab is an open-source web platform that integrates a harmonized infrastructure financing dataset, a curated policy and academic document corpus, and a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) interface into a single queryable research environment for Chinese overseas development finance. Analysts working on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) must move between datasets, government documents, and academic literature without an integrated interface for querying across all three at once. This paper documents BRI DataLab, a research platform that combines a harmonized project-level dataset derived from AidData's China's Global Loans and Grants Dataset v1.0 with a curated corpus of 42 policy documents, institutional reports, and academic sources, accessed through an AI-assisted retrieval and synthesis layer built on RAG. Three methodological contributions are described: the decisions involved in converting more than 33,000 tranche-level financing records into 4,861 infrastructure projects; the four-category selection framework governing the document collection; and the system design of the AI interface, including the epistemic constraints built into its system prompt. The central argument is that AI-assisted research interfaces are methodologically defensible when they are transparent about what they can and cannot establish.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fdata.2026.1863692","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,27]],"date-time":"2026-08-27T04:25:51Z","timestamp":1787804751000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["BRI DataLab: an AI-assisted research platform for Chinese infrastructure finance"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"9","author":[{"given":"Sanoop Sajan","family":"Koshy","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Humanities and Social Sciences","place":["Indian Institute of Technology Madras\u201e Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","unstructured":"China's global loans and grants dataset, version 1.0.\n          \n          2025"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1080\/23792949.2019.1689828","article-title":"A critical look at Chinese \u2018debt-trap diplomacy': the rise of a meme","volume":"5","author":"Brautigam","year":"2020","journal-title":"Area Dev. Policy"},{"key":"B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"163","DOI":"10.54648\/TRAD2018008","article-title":"China's \u2018Belt and Road' Initiative: mapping the world trade normative and strategic implications","volume":"52","author":"Chaisse","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. World Trade"},{"key":"B4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1421273","DOI":"10.3389\/fhumd.2024.1421273","article-title":"Transparency and accountability in AI systems: safeguarding wellbeing in the age of algorithmic decision-making","volume":"6","author":"Cheong","year":"2024","journal-title":"Front. Hum. Dyn."},{"key":"B5","unstructured":"Gallagher\n              K. P.\n            \n            \n              Ray\n              R.\n            \n          \n          Scope and findings: China's Overseas Development Finance Database.\n          \n          2020"},{"key":"B6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Gelpern\n              A.\n            \n            \n              Haddad\n              O.\n            \n            \n              Horn\n              S.\n            \n            \n              Kintzinger\n              P.\n            \n            \n              Parks\n              B. C.\n            \n            \n              Trebesch\n              C.\n            \n          \n          How China collateralizes (AidData Working Paper No. 136).\n          \n          2025","DOI":"10.2139\/ssrn.5572118"},{"key":"B7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Gelpern\n              A.\n            \n            \n              Horn\n              S.\n            \n            \n              Morris\n              S.\n            \n            \n              Parks\n              B.\n            \n            \n              Trebesch\n              C.\n            \n          \n          How China lends: A rare look into 100 debt contracts with foreign governments\n          \n          2021","DOI":"10.2139\/ssrn.3840991"},{"key":"B8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"267","DOI":"10.1093\/pan\/mps028","article-title":"Text as data: the promise and pitfalls of automatic content analysis methods for political texts","volume":"21","author":"Grimmer","year":"2013","journal-title":"Polit. 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Econ."},{"key":"B10","unstructured":"Jones\n              L.\n            \n            \n              Hameiri\n              S.\n            \n          \n          Debunking the myth of \u2018debt-trap diplomacy': how recipient countries shape China's Belt and Road Initiative\n          \n          2020"},{"key":"B11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1415","DOI":"10.1080\/01436597.2018.1559046","article-title":"Understanding China's Belt and Road Initiative: beyond \u201cgrand strategy\u201d to a state transformation analysis","volume":"40","author":"Jones","year":"2019","journal-title":"Third World Q."},{"key":"B12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2005.11401.","author":"Lewis","year":"2020","journal-title":"Retrieval-augmented generation for knowledge-intensive NLP tasks. arXiv"},{"key":"B13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1257092","DOI":"10.3389\/fpos.2023.1257092","article-title":"Large language models and political science","volume":"5","author":"Linegar","year":"2023","journal-title":"Front. 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P.\n            \n          \n          Demystifying Chinese overseas lending and development finance: why China became the world's largest official bilateral lender (GCI Policy Brief No. 018).\n          \n          2023"},{"key":"B18","unstructured":"Vision and actions on jointly building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road.\n          \n          2015"},{"key":"B19","volume-title":"China belt and road initiative (BRI) Investment Report 2023.","author":"Nedopil","year":"2024"},{"key":"B20","volume-title":"China belt and road initiative (BRI) Investment Report 2025","author":"Nedopil","year":"2026"},{"key":"B21","unstructured":"Parks\n              B. 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