Challenging the Belt and Road Initiative: The American and European alternatives

At the 47th G7 summit held in Cornwall in June 2021, President Biden announced a US-led multilateral plan to counter the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This plan was named “Build Back Better World” (B3W), mimicking the Build Back Better initiative adopted at home by the Biden Administration to revive the post-Covid American economy. A few months later on 1 December 2021 the European Union launched its own response to the Chinese BRI with a 300-billion-euro project called Global Gateway, seemingly coordinated with the American B3W. This paper locates the two Western initiatives in the context of a global quest for hegemony in which China has successfully challenged the existing geopolitical frameworks in Africa, Latin America and – even more importantly – in East and Southeast Asia. The Belt and Road Initiative was announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013 as a modern Silk Road, making clear China’s ambition to return to its historical role as a world superpower. To improve infrastructure to facilitate world trade (and obviously trade with China) was the official aim of the ambitious plan. After almost a decade since its launch, however, it is evident that the project was not only about infrastructure. It responded to the needs of a rapidly expanding economy in transition from a global manufacturing hub to an industrially advanced country. The BRI simultaneously addressed three major challenges: finding profitable investment opportunities for the immense Chinese financial reserves of foreign currencies; securing strategic commodities; and opening new markets for Chinese exports. The BRI also was (and still is) a major international foreign policy initiative aimed at projecting China into a leadership role in a context of declining American hegemonic power. The American Build Back Better World (B3W) and the European Global Gateway will not only need to compete with China in terms of trade and infrastructure, but also with China’s quest for hegemony that sees its main leverage in her regional prominence in East Asia.