The Assyrians were using roads for military and economic purposes around 1 BC:
Rome used their roads for much than just military warfare. The economic benefits to the Roman Empire were many. Roman GDP Estimate:The Assyrians were the first to institute, control and maintain a system of roads throughout their empire. Pony expresses with regular way stations for messengers to rest and/or exchange horses were established. Later, these would form the basis for the Persians to expand this system to their own empire.
China is working the roads issue in Africa...The first writer to complain about trade deficits seems to have been Pliny the Elder, in about 75 AD. Gloomily cataloguing luxury imports -- Persian perfumery, Chinese silks, Indian diamonds, Arabian incense and pearls -- he blamed Roman women for costing the Empire 100 million sesterces a year. (Pliny, apparently a bit of a kill-joy, considered silk immoral -- "we seek this material from the end of the earth, so Roman ladies can show off their see-through clothes in public" -- and called perfume "the most pointless of all luxuries.") He seems to have been unduly worried, at least on economic grounds: the Empire ultimately did fall, but not until 400 years later, and not because of balance-of-payments problems.
Some modern analysts calculate 100 million sesterces to be about 2 percent of Roman GDP.
According to Akwe Amosu, an Africa expert for the Open Society Institute, "over 800 Chinese companies, the vast majority of them state-owned, are operating in 49 African countries." They are drilling for oil, extracting minerals, and building roads, railways, hotels, and factories.
China's willingness to support some of Africa's worst regimes in exchange for special access to African resources raises a number of serious worries, such as those laid out last year by Joshua Kurlantzick in The New Republic.
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