But closer political alignment with Moscow taints it with the weakness of Vladimir Putin’s regime. By allying with Russia, Beijing may be able to secure cheap oil. Some of China’s geopolitical entanglements also look like bad bets. Some, particularly in Europe, have disengaged from China’s investment initiatives, disappointed in the meagre returns. Many countries are increasingly disillusioned with the BRI.
Loans have gone sour, embroiling China in messy debt restructurings in Zambia and Sri Lanka. The problems with China’s overseas lending and investment drive, formalised into the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, have become more salient. Europe and the US would do better to offer assistance and trade on fair and open terms. Many developing countries are, commendably, declining to be bullied or bribed into taking sides. The flaws in China’s decades-long campaign of recycling its surpluses into state-directed investments abroad on secretive and arbitrary terms are becoming evident, as is Beijing’s record of picking allies and clients - such as Russia and Pakistan. But that challenge is also an opportunity. The EU in 2021 launched its Global Gateway, which aims to leverage up a relatively modest amount of public money to fund €300bn of investment in connectivity projects over six years.Īs rivals to China, the rich countries’ problem is not just financial firepower but Beijing’s increasing tendency to politicise its investment and link it to security alliances.
Washington merged federal agencies to create the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) in 2018, and at the G7 rich nations meeting in 2021 President Joe Biden launched a Build Back Better World initiative, repackaged the next year as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII). With developing countries’ borrowing costs rising but massive green infrastructure spending needed, the US and the EU are trying hard to match Beijing’s offer of investment. And when we’re engaged with you guys, we get a lecture.” He quoted a developing country figure thus: “When we’re engaged with the Chinese, we get an airport. One of the pithier remarks about America’s geopolitical rivalry with China came recently from Larry Summers, who served in Barack Obama and Bill Clinton’s administrations in a different, more optimistic era of globalisation.
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