G7’ s infrastructure plan can’t compete with China’s BRI

The Group of Seven ( G7)’ s politically driven initiative to offer up to $ 40 trillion to help low- and middle- income countries in infrastructure projects is “doomed to fail,” as the G7 economies battered by COVID- 19 couldn’t come up with a feasible plan that can compete with the Chinaproposed Belt and Road Initiative ( BRI), experts said Tuesday.

G7 nations agreed to launch a new global infrastructure initiative called “Build Back Better World” ( B3W) to provide a “transparent infrastructure partnership” to help narrow the gap for the $ 40 trillion infrastructure investment needed in the developing world, the White House said.

The initiative, pushed by the US, has been widely viewed as a move to counter the BRI, which has been implemented in numerous countries and regions with tangible results.

“The political meaning of the B3W initiative far outweighs the material results it may yield,” Zhao Gancheng, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

By contrast, the BRI is being carried out persistently, with China having signed cooperation agreements with around 140 countries and regions since 2013. In the past eight years, China’s direct investment in these countries and regions totaled about $ 136 billion, official data showed.

Although some Western politicians tout the cliché of “Chinese debt trap,” rising evidences show that projects have been carried smoothly. One example of that is Turkmenistan’s recent action of paying off loans offered by China for a pipeline project and the first stage of development at Galkynysh – a major gas field in the country.

AFP reported that officials in Turkmenistan said recently that they had paid off a loan offered by China Development Bank “on time and in full.”

“China’s investments in BRI countries and regions are based on both economic benefits and humanitarian principles, and therefore it’s willing to invest in projects in countries with potential risks and credit rating problems. In this regard, the B3W couldn’t compete as its privatesector capital providers put investment yields first,” Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

He said that the Biden administration’s massive infrastructure package to revive the US economy has faced high hurdles at home, and the administration is unlikely to be able to implement the more ambitious B3W with its G7 partners.