In recent years, many countries in Europe and the United States have criticized the Communist Party’s “Belt and Road” initiative as a debt trap, but have failed to take more active and coordinated action to counteract it. According to an article in London’s Financial Times on February 2, the EU intends to work together with allies such as the US, Japan, India and Australia to promote global infrastructure plans, which are expected to be discussed specifically at the G7 summit.
According to the Financial Times, “ELLALINK”, a high-capacity submarine cable connecting Latin America and southern Europe, will be put into operation this month, and the EU also intends to cooperate more actively with the U.S., Japan, India and other allies in global infrastructure construction, by supporting developing countries to build high-quality The EU also intends to cooperate more actively with the United States, Japan, India and other allies in global infrastructure development to counteract the ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party’s “Belt and Road” by supporting developing countries to build high-quality infrastructure.
A senior EU diplomat was quoted as saying that in the past, when many governments talked about counteracting the Belt and Road, they mostly just “talked a good game” or formulated some policies, but did not have a coordinated and lasting geopolitical strategy or plan. But now the EU has recognized that “it is really necessary to work together on infrastructure plans to avoid countries becoming overly dependent on China.
The report also revealed that the EU and its allies will carefully discuss the approach after U.S. President Joe Biden asked the G7 summit in June to include an agenda on global infrastructure plans.
“The G7 Summit, also known as the G7 Summit, is a forum for heads of state to meet and discuss major policies of mutual interest, sponsored by the United States, Britain, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Canada. India, Australia and South Korea will also be invited to this year’s G7 Summit.
In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has sought to expand its influence in developing countries by investing in major infrastructure projects such as roads, railroads, bridges and ports, a move that has raised alarm among Western powers. A growing number of countries have openly criticized the Communist Party’s Belt and Road Initiative as imposing heavy debt on the small and vulnerable countries involved, and generally lacking environmental considerations.
However, there has been a lack of coordinated positions and more active action by Western countries in the past. While the European Union published the EU-Asia Connectivity initiative in 2018, and the United States passed the BUILD Act in late 2018, and launched the following year with Japan and Australia “However, the actual actions of each country are still slow and the results are lackluster.
In view of this, the officials believe that it is unlikely that Western countries will launch a single global infrastructure program, and that a more feasible approach is to promote their own independent but coordinated bilateral or multilateral programs.
The report even quoted Lindsay Gorman, a researcher at the German Marshall Fund (GMF)’s Alliance for Defense of Democracies, as suggesting that Western countries must focus on key areas such as digital construction in order to To resist the penetration of the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian system into Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, and even Europe.
According to publicly available information, back in 2019, the EU discussed a partnership with Japan in which both sides announced their intention to build “sustainable, rules-based connectivity from the Indo-Pacific region to the Western Balkans and Africa.
In addition, the EU held talks with India in mid-April this year on cooperation in infrastructure projects around the world. The plan, known as the “Connectivity” partnership, covers energy, digital and transport sectors and aims to provide better legal security and more generous debt terms than the Belt and Road Initiative, but the terms and funding sources have not yet been finalized. The details of the terms and funding sources have not yet been finalized. India and the EU hope to announce the initiative at a remote summit on May 8.
The U.S. government, meanwhile, is seeking to promote a coalition of Western democracies as a counterweight to the Communist Party’s unfolding global expansion of power.
“There is a window of opportunity to cooperate and create an environment for a partnership-based globalization that will be more attractive than what China is offering.” An EU diplomat was quoted in an April 22 report in the Financial Times as saying that “the EU and its allies have a common interest in coming up with alternatives to the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, rather than letting Chinese [Communist Party] investment dominate.”
The report also quoted another diplomat as saying that EU ambassadors had developed a broader strategy for countering the Communist Party’s Belt and Road in a private meeting on April 21. The discussion, which lasted nearly two hours, was a “wake-up call” to strengthen efforts in this area.
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