The experience of the pandemic has highlighted that so-called “high impact, low frequency” events can have tremendous impact on the globally distributed supply and production chains, both directly through state actions and indirectly through systemic effects. This article argues that the success of the BRI, which has been predicated in Chinese documents of reference on its delivering of economic performance in a context of assumed normality, is instead equally reliant on its resilience to the disruptions caused by events with global impact. In particular, supply chain resilience becomes a prerequisite for sustainability in an economic and strategic sense.