Delivering Attraction? How BRI Implementation Shapes China’s Soft Power in Bangladesh and Pakistan

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) can generate soft power, but its reputational payoffs are conditional, not automatic. I argue that BRI projects produce ‘developmental soft power’ primarily when three conditions hold: credible delivery, fiscally prudent financing and local narrative co-ownership by domestic elites and media. A qualitative comparative analysis of Bangladesh and Pakistan shows divergent pathways. In Pakistan, where strategic ties and elite consensus long predate the BRI, China–Pakistan Economic Corridor amplifies an already durable pro-China orientation and buffers backlash. In Bangladesh, visible infrastructure gains improve China’s image, but debt concerns and India-linked counter-narratives constrain reputational returns. These findings extend Nye’s attraction framework by specifying development performance as a distinct mechanism of soft power and by identifying the political and narrative conditions under which infrastructure translates into legitimacy abroad.