West’s response to BRI ‘not credible’
Competing PGII initiative has much to prove before it can be taken seriously, analysts say
The United States’ push for a global infrastructure program with Europe is misguided because it is a political response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, observers said.
Stephen Smith, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, told Canada’s National Post: “If this new initiative is too focused on ‘countering China’ it will be unsuccessful. Global South countries that are on the receiving end of this investment don’t care about US-China competition. They don’t want to choose; they just want more investment.”
Group of Seven leaders pledged on June 26 to raise $600 billion in private and public funds over five years to finance infrastructure in developing countries and counter
China’s earlier, multitrillion-dollar initiative.
Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington, told China Daily: “China is not containable in the global infrastructure and development space. Besides, with trillions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure underfinancing in the developing world, there is ample space for multiple providers in global infrastructure.”
Gupta sees the intent of the G7’s socalled Partnership for Global Investment and Infrastructure, also known as the PGII, as competing with the Belt and Road Initiative.
“Of course, we have seen numerous such initiatives being announced by the West over the past couple of years, such as Build Back Better World, Global Gateway and the Blue Dot Initiative,” Gupta said.
“None has made any visibly useful contribution so far to international development. So, one has to wonder if the PGII will be any better. The answer is probably no.”
Reuters Asia Economics Editor Pete Sweeney, in an opinion piece, said, “Financial aid with better governance and less geopolitics would be preferable. During the Cold War, the West threw trillions of dollars into the Southern Hemisphere to wean states from the Soviet Union. Doing the same just to keep them from China could deliver similarly lackluster results.”
US President Joe Biden and other G7 leaders from the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan relaunched the PGII at their annual gathering last month at Schloss Elmau in Germany.
Biden said the US would use $200 billion in grants, federal funds and private investment over five years to support projects in low- and middleincome countries that help tackle climate change, as well as improve global health, gender equity and digital infrastructure.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the gathering that Europe will provide 300 billion euros ($317 billion) for the initiative over the same period to build up a sustainable alternative to the BRI, which China launched in 2013.
“For close to a decade, the West has struggled to respond to China’s Belt and Road Initiative,” Gyude Moore, a former minister of public works in Liberia, told National Public Radio in the United States. “Their sharp critique of Chinese loans and lending practices was not accompanied by a credible alternative,” said Moore.
The $600 billion investment pledge is not enough to plug global infrastructure holes or replace the BRI, according to He Weiwen, a former economic and commercial counselor at Chinese consulates-general in New York and San Francisco.
Despite the G7’s attempts to exclude China in telecommunications, clean energy and digital infrastructure, the best results would be produced by collaborating through joint investments, He told the South China Morning Post.
Speaking on June 29 about the G7 plan, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said: “China always welcomes all initiatives to promote the construction of global infrastructure. We don’t think there is such an issue of similar initiatives replacing each other; but we oppose the promotion of geopolitical calculations under the banner of infrastructure construction and words and deeds that try to smear and slander the Belt and Road Initiative.”