[Text/Barbara Morns, Stuart Liu, translated by Observer.com/Guo Han]
Not again. At the recent G20 summit, U.S. and European Union leaders pledged for the umpteenth time that they would not be overtaken by China's Belt and Road Initiative, a modern "Silk Road" of infrastructure investment.
On Tuesday (15th), local time, European and American leaders gathered in Bali to work hard for a $600 billion infrastructure investment plan to counter the "Belt and Road" initiative. The plan will demonstrate the soft power of Europe and the United States by making large-scale investments in emerging economies to build ports, roads, railroad tracks and energy networks.
The problem is: the same tone already makes our ears hear calluses.
In Bali, everything is carefully arranged to reap the flow and attention. In the luxurious Kempinski Hotel, US President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sit in the middle of the conference hall, overlooking the Indian Ocean. Accompanied by Indonesian President Joko Widodo, the host of the G20 Summit, they unveiled the Global Infrastructure and Investment Partnership (PGII).
Von der Leyen promised: "We will provide values-based, high-standard and transparent infrastructure partnerships to low- and middle-income countries. ”
Biden and von der Leyen unveiled global infrastructure and partnership investment plans during the G20 summit, but few developing countries responded
If this sounds familiar to you, don't be surprised. Because we've heard it countless times. The PGII project was launched at the G7 summit in the UK last year and officially launched at the G7 summit in June this year. You must have heard how the United States has fleshed out the slogan "Build Back Better World" into an infrastructure program. Europe has been working toward its Global Gateway Initiative. The West is adept at naming names and launching all sorts of plans to compete with the Belt and Road Initiative. But the big question is whether these plans will stand the test of reality and compete with China's initiatives.
A worrying sign for Biden and von der Leyen is that few developing countries are present at the event, which they expect to send a strong signal to the Belt and Road Initiative. India and host Indonesia were the only developing countries to attend.
The West has been struggling with branding for many years. While China's Belt and Road Initiative quickly translated into solid reinforced concrete, the response from the West remained like a mirror.
Erin Murphy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank and expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), acknowledges that an infrastructure investment plan of this magnitude means "bringing together a wealth of practical technical knowledge, technical expertise, and, most importantly, capital" from several countries.
Bundaz, a China studies scholar at the Strategic Research Foundation, a Paris-based think tank, criticized the West's inability to come up with concrete projects. "If we want to regain credibility, we should pay less attention to concrete infrastructure projects in the Indo-Pacific."
Disadvantages of the EU
Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China is providing competitive infrastructure investment and has the advantage of being one step ahead. The Belt and Road Initiative was first launched in 2013 and is seen by many developing countries as an opportunity to boost economic development.
While Beijing pushes its global strategy through large state-owned enterprises, Brussels and Washington cannot force Western companies to do so, even though they very much want the private sector to be part of their global strategy.
The United States and the European Union did do some planning, but once it came to the specifics, they began to "play tai chi", and the project time spanned too long. While these programs are often important from an aid and development perspective, they fall far short of the set of major trade levers that China has constructed. The EU plans to build a floating photovoltaic power plant in Albania and water projects in Namibia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, India and Chile. U.S. plans include sanitation projects in East Timor and medical services in Brazil.
The floating photovoltaic power plant invested by the European Union in Albania was damaged by a storm after its completion in June last year
Murphy stressed that the track of Western investment in global infrastructure is basically catching up with China. It is simply unrealistic to catch up with the scale and breadth of the Belt and Road Initiative. "We can choose to be smarter ... Focus on the quality rather than quantity of infrastructure projects, and look at areas that China has not yet touched. ”
For some in Brussels, the EU's push for the Global Gateway Initiative exposes institutional problems. For example, the project is the sole responsibility of the EU Commission for International Partnerships. An EU diplomat said, "Given the strategic importance of the project, it would be better for the EU External Action Service to take over." This is because this type of infrastructure investment has less to do with the aid and development themes that the Department focuses on and more to do with how to address China's challenges. ”
Francesca Ghiretti, a researcher at the Mercator Institute for China in Germany, believes that if the West can make a real counterattack in the field of infrastructure investment, it will definitely enhance the geopolitical and economic interests of the West.
However, if the West does not gain a foothold in countries or regions where China invests actively, "our relations with those countries will regress, which will affect not only the balance of power in multilateral platforms such as the United Nations, but also the future economic prosperity of the West." ”
"So it's extremely important for us to do the right thing. Unfortunately, we have taken the wrong step several times. ”
The contradiction between whether global infrastructure investment should serve development or focus more on its strategic purpose has long plagued the West, making it difficult for it to compete with China's Belt and Road Initiative. "We always oscillate between the issue of aid to developing countries," Giffran said. They are simply eager to do business with us and are not willing to cater to our strategic and commercial interests. ”
(This article was published in the European edition of the Politico news website on November 15)
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