Lending hefty loans to financially unstable economies, China’s BRI policy tends to capture territories of the countries that are unable to pay the amount on the specified time bound. Srilanka is one such example and as per the experts, pakistan could be the next.
What is Belt & Road Initiative (BRI)?
China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) scheme, launched in 2013 by XI jinping, involves development and investment initiative that would stretch from Asia to Europe and beyond it.
All together, more than hundred countries across the globe have signed an agreement with China to co-operate in BRI projects like Railways, ports, highways and various infrastructural projects. The countries that went against this had to face threats from China over other trade deals such as UK.
Few major priorities of this initiative are as:
1) Policy coordination
2) Infrastructure connectivity
3) Financial inclusion
4) Unrestricted trade
5) People-to-people bond.
Drawback of the loans provided by China:
1) Lack of transparency.
2) Poor environmental and labour standards
3) Coercive approach.
Although, G7 countries had come with a counter Scheme called Build Back Better World (B3W) to ensure that China’s monopoly over the smaller countries could be ended with what-so-ever it takes.
Before talking about B3W Initiative, let’s take a look at what is the G7 summit and why is it valued so high across the world.
What is G7?
It is a group of seven richest democracies of the world. It includes UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States as its members. It was formerly known as G5 and G6.
G7 summit 2021 was held in Cornwall, UK from June 11th to June 13th.
This year’s main agenda of G7 summit was to talk about counter approach to China’s BRI initiative. The countries were searching for a better plan to surge China’s economic and military rise over the past 40 years and so finally this year’s G7 summit came with a better and effective plan.
What is B3W and how will it counter BRI?
Build back better world initiative calls for spending billions of dollars by 2035 to help developing countries in building railways, ports and other infrastructure projects. Government will collaborate with private sectors will adhering to climate standards and labour practices.
This initiative is strongly backed by United States president Joe Biden.
There wasn’t much details given yet and the plan seems to be underway now. Neither did they disclose the total spendings to be made by the year 2035 through this project. But one thing is sure that, this initiative will help many countries in getting a break free from China.
As far as India is concerned, India has always shown concern over China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a project of BRI which passes through the disputed territory of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.
India has officially not reacted to the G7 countries’ latest plan, but it is expected to be a welcome news for New Delhi.
Eduindex News 