daniel chigunweBEIJING. – After US president Joe Biden and leaders from other Group of Seven (G7) nations proposed to raiseUS $600 billion in the next five years to finance infrastructure projects in developing countries, a move generally interpreted by observers as intending to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), economists expressed scepticism over the feasibility of such a program, citing reasons such as the US’ strained government debt status, poor infrastructure construction abilities and past failure with a similar project.
They also criticized the G7 proposal for having an “insincere” intention, as it was raised more from the perspective of launching a political competition with China, instead of really caring about the infrastructure situations in lower income countries. In this sense, it is unlikely to yield any project that could compare with China’s flagship BRI projects, which focus on mutual connectivity, win-win, not decoupling and exclusionism.
Government leaders from Group of Seven nations made a pledge on Sunday at their annual gathering to raise US$600 billion in private and public funds over the next five years to finance infrastructure in developing countries, in a project called the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), a Reuters report noted on Monday.
US President Joe Biden said that the US aims to mobilize US$200 billion for the PGII project over the period through grants, federal funds and private investment to support projects that help tackle climate change, improve global health, digital infrastructure and gender equity. He highlighted several flagship projects, including a $2 billion solar development project in Angola, the report noted.
Europe will mobilize 300 billion euros for the initiative, Reuters said.
On the sidelines of the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Germany, Biden said that the PGII is not aid or charity, but will “deliver returns for everyone”, including the American people, according to a report by npr.org on Sunday.
The G7 nations launched the PGII project only about one year after a very similar scheme was unveiled at the G7 conference last July. The scheme, named Build Back Better World, commonly known as B3W, is considered by many media outlets as a predecessor to the PGII. UK newspaper The Guardian, for example, used the word “relaunch” to imply that PGII is just a disguised version of B3W.
Although the US government didn’t explicitly mention the relationship between PGII and the China-proposed BRI program, many media outlets including Reuters as well as economists mentioned that the real intention of PGII is to counter China’s BRI which has delivered many concrete projects since it was proposed in 2013.
Hu Qimu, chief research fellow at the Beijing-based Sinosteel Economic Research Institute, said that China’s global infrastructure cooperation has continued to yield results in recent years, standing in sharp contrast to some Western governments’ “dereliction of duty” in this area.
“The PGII is like a shouted slogan to ring-fence China’s strategies, a kind of tactic to create an atmosphere of cracking down on China,” Hu said, adding that it could also be a method used by Biden to pander to voters ahead of the US mid-term elections. – Global Times
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