U.S. President Joe Biden holds his first press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, March 25, 2021.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he called British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday (March 26) and proposed that democracies launch an infrastructure program to rival the Communist Party’s Belt and Road Initiative.
“I would suggest that we should basically have a similar initiative that would be launched by democratic countries to help communities around the world that need help,” Biden told reporters. Biden told reporters.
The Communist Party’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an infrastructure plan launched by Communist Party leader Xi Jinping in 2013, involves development and investment that will extend from East Asia to Europe. The project will significantly expand China’s economic and political influence.
According to Reuters, more than 100 countries have signed on to the Belt and Road, a partnership that includes rail, ports, highways and other infrastructure projects, with more than 2,600 plans worth $3.7 trillion as of mid-year statistics last year.
In 2019, the Trump administration launched the Blue Dot Network, an infrastructure initiative that it hopes will promote high-quality, trusted standards for global infrastructure development to counter the Communist Party’s Belt and Road Initiative. But the Blue Dot Network only advocates private financing and does not have a lending function itself.
Before that, Biden also told the media on Thursday that he would invest heavily in improving U.S. infrastructure and ensuring that the United States wins against China.
Biden said he plans to unveil a trillion-dollar plan next week to upgrade U.S. infrastructure, which will ensure increased U.S. investment in technologies such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
Biden said China is investing heavily in technology and infrastructure, and that U.S. infrastructure investment, which ranks only 13th in the world, is three times greater in China than in the U.S. Rebuilding infrastructure will be one of his key tasks.
Biden said China’s overall goal is to become the world’s leading nation, the richest nation, and the most powerful nation. But he said, “In my opinion, that’s not going to happen because the United States will continue to grow and develop.”
In the wake of the Chinese Communist virus (Wuhan pneumonia) pandemic, Chinese authorities have said that about 20 percent of Belt and Road projects have been “seriously affected. Some countries have also terminated or scaled back Belt and Road projects after criticizing them as poor quality, costly and unnecessary, and potentially creating a debt trap that could erode national sovereignty.
In addition to the infrastructure program, the White House said the two leaders also discussed COVID-19, global health security, climate change, China, Iran and political stability in Northern Ireland.
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