B3W rival or complement to BRI?

Editor's note: Behzad Abdollahpour is a freelance writer and researcher from the Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

At the G7 summit held last month, U.S. government proposed Build Back Better World (B3W) which seeks to meet infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries. It will collectively provide help to narrow the $40 trillion infrastructure needs in the developing world by 2035 which have been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. G7 partners and their other allies commit themselves to mobilize private-sector capital in four areas of focus-climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality.

They also promise to uphold labor rights, transparency and anti-corruption policies.  But what is obvious is that B3W is just an imitation of the more established Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in most instances and aims to rival it especially in the field of infrastructure. While this Western alternative to BRI merely focuses on mobilizing private financing gap existed in the countries discussed before, the details about financing and scope of it are vague.

Making things more doubtful is that none of G7 nations have revealed that how they will finance the related projects. Considering that most of them suffer from financial deficit, this question arises that how they could offer such a huge amount of money to support and implement B3W project. Moreover, they have deep economic ties with Beijing, will they risk their huge trade investments deals for Washington?

The Joe Biden administration is also currently struggling to pass domestic infrastructure bill to enhance U.S. old and inefficient infrastructure. Chinese, though, seek to build "new infrastructure" which is "digital, smart, and innovative." In this vein, Dr. Jonathan Sullivan, director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham, mentioned that "China has the capacity, the engineering skills, the ambition and money to achieve incredible things."

The cooperation mechanism within BRI are facilitated by various international organizations and platforms. The projects within this initiative are also underwritten by Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Silk Road Fund and other banking structures existed in China.

The new highway connecting the city of Bar on Montenegro's Adriatic coast to its landlocked neighbor Serbia, a project being done by the China Road and Bridge Corporation, May 11, 2021. /VCG

While win-win cooperation, joint efforts and development to achieve mutual benefits and prosperity are the recurring themes that could be found in most Chinese officials' statements regarding BRI, B3W resorts to anti-Chinese narrative to cast doubt on the quality and viability of BRI related projects. In fact, the last three American presidents from Barack Obama and Donald Trump to Biden feel uncomfortable to play in a game that its rules are set by China. Casting suspicions on Chinese initiatives, they contend that China does not act within international acts and precepts.

Obama's Pivot to Asia, Trump's Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy and now Biden's Build Back Better World, on the surface focus on facilitating the paths for sustainable growth in the Asia- Pacific region which could promote connectivity and thereby improving the quality of life for the recipient countries. But the point is that the underlying motivation behind them is to contain the rise of China in its own backyard, and maintain the primacy of U.S. in the Asia-Pacific. Such approaches would merely cause deep fear of containment in Chinese minds and escalate rivalry and distrust in Sino-U.S. relation.

Therefore, U.S. development initiatives and agendas indeed are predicated on establishing U.S. alliance system in Asia-Pacific to contain the rise of China which is seemingly the continuation of all U.S. administrations since the normalization of the bilateral relations.  Although they resorts to different approaches to realize their goals.

Regarding global COVID-19 vaccine distribution, up until now, although U.S. government has secured enough doses to protect its entire population of 330 million and still have more than half a billion surplus vaccines left over, it has not taken any serious measure to distribute the millions of vaccine doses it has pledged to share globally. However, since the emergence of COVID-19, Chinese government has actively contributed to the fight against COVID-19 both in China and globally.

Following the promises made by the G7 nations to donate one billion COVID vaccines to poor countries, which is considered one of the pillar of B3W - health security - Bill Emmott, co-director of the Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy explained that "President Biden's generous offer of 200 million Pfizer/BioNTech doses this year and 300 million next year and Boris Johnson's offer of 100 million sometime in the next 12 months" are not comparable with Sinovac and Sinopharm's monthly production of vaccine which is currently reached to "about 17-20 million doses every day, which accounts for more than half of the 34-36 million being administered daily around the world."

Therefore, including out a key player like China in addressing global challenges would not only help the implementation of these projects but also sows the seeds of distrust among the nations to join this initiative. B3W should seek to work in parallel with BRI to offer global economic benefits and health security for all nations.

Courtesy of CGTN

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-07-31/B3W-rival-or-complement-to-BRI--12lxqQDFXa0/index.html