In recent years, Beijing has responded to the environmental and transparency concerns of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by transforming it into a more environmentally friendly enterprise, or ‘green BRI’. This Regional Outlook paper develops a relational model of coopted authoritarianism between China and green BRI host countries to explain the dynamics behind the greenwashing of China’s development infrastructure projects. Coopted authoritarianism refers to the mutually beneficial relationship between developing countries and China based on utilitarian and transactional considerations. China’s economic need to shift its domestic over-capacity overseas while expanding its regional geopolitical influence, on the one hand, is supported by the economic needs and political incentives of host countries on the other. This partnership of convenience drives host countries, largely marginalised in the international development funding regime, towards accepting ‘greenwashed’ projects that feed into their industrialisation ambitions but run contrary to the global as well as local environmental common good.