Build Back Better World, the G7’s Answer to the BRI

While the G7 summit this year was disappointing to some, mainly due to unambitious contributions to the climate fight and vaccine donations, one interesting thing they did manage to get through was “Build Back Better World” (B3W). It is intended to be an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which has been one of China’s most deployed tools for gaining worldwide influence.

What is the G7?

G7 stands for “Group of 7” and it is basically where 7 richest democracies by nominal GDP hang out. They also need to be on pretty good terms with the US. Its current members are the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Canada; and the EU is also represented.

What is the BRI?

According to the initiative itself: “BRI is a transcontinental long-term policy and investment program which aims at infrastructure development and acceleration of the economic integration of countries along the route of the historic Silk Road.” Paradoxically, the Road element of Belt and Road actually refers to the maritime element of it which has little to do with the Silk Road; the Belt is the Silk Road. It mainly invests in infrastructure projects such as ports, rail and roads in developing countries. For example China gave the corrupt, debt-riddled Sri Lankan government loans to build a port, which Sri Lanka couldn’t repay. The complicated affair ended with China getting a 99-year lease on the port. Some of the other concerns surrounding the BRI include its lack of transparency and rampant corruption along with a multitude of other issues ranging from environmental concerns to Chinese state-owned companies taking over vital infrastructure in other countries.

So as part of the West’s broader anti-PRC (“People’s” Republic of China) push, B3W was created as an alternative to the BRI. There has been talk about creating a BRI alternative in the EU for quite some time, and with the US back on board it isn’t entirely surprising that they came up with something. So far very little is known about B3W, but what information we have and can infer is quite interesting.

Most of the noteworthy points come from the White House Fact Sheet on it, so we’ll mainly be looking at that. As the name would suggest, it puts emphasis in democratic values, being climate-friendly, and helping developing economies recover from the pandemic. There are a number of other interesting highlights, which should be looked at to understand the role B3W wants to play: there’s talk about transparency, high standards and ensuring a positive social impact of the infrastructure. The lack of these constitute many of the criticisms aimed at the BRI. It also talks about how B3W infrastructure will be developed alongside local communities as “true patterns”. This is interesting especially when paired with the fact that B3W seems to be particularly interested in Africa, because one of the main criticisms of the EU’s attempts at countering the BRI in Africa has been that the EU is too paternalistic (they ask for democratic reforms in dictatorships). With that statement B3W appears to be trying to address some of these concerns.

While B3W could become an important asset in the fight against the CCP, it is too early to tell at the moment. It could reinforce democratic values worldwide, and help fight climate change at the same time; or it could be a push of American imperialism the EU is forced to be complicit in, which would be a field day for CCP propaganda; it could also just die down and be forgotten, it’s just too early to tell at the moment. Either way it is telling that the G7 feels a need to counter the BRI, especially in Africa where it is often the only option they have, due to western negligence.