Opinion | Unbuckling China’s belt and road plan will not be easy for Western powers
While the major powers are offering alternatives to infrastructure funding, developing countries are trying to play a stronger hand in negotiating with the Chinese
Five years since the concept of the “Belt and Road Initiative” was inaugurated, the current public narrative is pushback.
From Washington to Sri Lanka and Malaysia, via parts of Eurasia, the overriding discourse is of loosening the belt and stopping the road.
Major powers have started to marshal their resources to offer alternatives, while developing countries are shuffling their decks to try to play a stronger hand in negotiating with the Chinese.
The most recent expressions of resistance have come from Europe and the United States. In Europe, the new Europe-Asia Connectivity Strategy paper offers a vision for how Europe would like the Eurasian continent connected up.
In contrast, the United States appears to be both offering a direct line of support – through a US$110 million-plus fund for investment into ‘digital economy, energy, and infrastructure’ in the Indo-Pacific – and a new announcement that Overseas Private Investment Corporation – the US government’s development finance institution – may be receiving a supercharge to allow it to more directly compete with China in the developing world.