On June 12, leaders of the G7 group sought to counter China’s growing influence by launching an infrastructure plan to compete with the Belt and Road initiative. trillion dollars worth of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The G7 leadership group convening in southwestern England has come to a unified response to Xi Jinping’s growing assertiveness, following China’s dramatic economic and military rise. Nation for the past 40 years.
According to the White House, US President Joe Biden and other G7 leaders hope their plan, called the Rebuild a Better World (B3W) initiative, will provide a rapport. transparent infrastructure partner, to help shrink the $40 trillion developing nations need by 2035.
“It’s not just about confronting or challenging China,” said a senior Biden administration official. To date, we have not come up with a positive alternative that reflects our values, standards and trading methods.”
The White House also said the G7 and its allies will use the initiative to raise private-sector capital in areas such as climate, health and health security, digital technology and such as equity and gender equality. It is unclear how the plan will be run, or how much capital will ultimately be allocated.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by Xi Jinping in 2013, encompasses development and investment initiatives spanning Asia to Europe and beyond. again. To date, more than 100 countries have signed agreements with China to cooperate on BRI projects such as railways, ports, highways and other infrastructure.
Many experts see Xi Jinping’s plan to create a modern version of the ancient Silk Road trade route, to link China with Asia, Europe and beyond. is the vehicle for the expansion of Communist China.
The Rise of China
The leaders of the G7, which includes the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France and Japan, wanted through their meeting at the seaside resort of Carbis Bay to send a message to world that the richest democracies can provide an alternative to China’s growing influence.
The emergence of China as a great power can be considered as one of the most important geopolitical events in recent times, besides the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – which ended. Cold War.
In 1979, China’s economy was even weaker than Italy’s. But after opening up to foreign investment and implementing a number of market reforms, the country has become the world’s second-largest economy and a global leader in a range of new technologies.
The US official added that so far, the West has not come up with a positive alternative to the administration’s “lack of transparency, standards and low labor environment, as well as coercive approach”. China has made many countries worse off.
According to the Refinitiv database, as of mid-2020, more than 2,600 projects with a cost of $3.7 trillion have been linked to the BRI. This number could be even higher if there was no pandemic affecting the global economy. In June last year, China’s Foreign Ministry announced that about 20% of projects had been seriously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of the G7 plan, the United States will work with the U.S. Congress to supplement existing development financing and to “co-authorize hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure investment,” the White House said. said.
Condemn forced labor in China
At the conference, Mr. Biden made relevant comments to the G7 leaders about Washington’s strong statement about forced labor in China. However, the attitudes of countries on this issue also have certain differences. Essentially, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France largely agreed with Biden’s call; while Germany, Italy and the European Union were more hesitant in the first session of the G7 Summit on Saturday (June 12), according to a senior Biden administration official. The conflict is unlikely to be resolved until Sunday, when the group issues a statement summarizing the summit’s outcome.
The official also said that Biden wants G7 leaders to have a single voice in condemning the government’s practice of forced labor against Uighur Muslims and other minorities. China. Biden hopes this could become part of a joint communique to be issued on Sunday when the summit is over, but it seems some European allies are reluctant to confront China head-on.
The China statement in the communique may not come with any immediate punishment for Beijing, but the move will send a message that the G7 is serious about protecting human rights and will cooperate with each other. working closely to end the problem of forced labor by the communist government.
According to estimates by experts and UN human rights groups, more than 1 million people, mostly Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, are currently detained in the camp system. workers in Xinjiang.
The Chinese government has always denied all allegations of forced labor or human rights abuses. At first, they denied the existence of these concentration camps, but later asserted that they were vocational training centers and were built to fight extremism. At the end of 2019, China announced that all those placed in these camps had “graduated”.
