KARACHI:
The 2021 G7 summit took place at Carbis Bay in Cornwall, UK. Since the 1970s, the G7 – which is an informal bloc of industrialised democracies consisting of the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the UK – has met every year. The group meets annually to discuss global economic issues, health emergencies, international security, energy policy, and the climate crisis.
Among several landmark declarations from the G7 summit was US President Joe Biden’s proposal to Build Back Better World (B3W). Biden is championing this $40 trillion global infrastructure plan as an alternative to China’s BRI. With the B3W, the G7 aims to provide high-quality financing for infrastructure such as railways in Africa and wind farms in Asia to propel global green economic growth to rival China’s BRI. It can be recalled that the US also offered an alternative proposal to beneficiary states of the BRI and pushed forward its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) in November 2017 and rejuvenated the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue — an informal strategic dialogue that is maintained by talks between member countries i.e. the US, Japan, Australia, and India. Analogous to the B3W, the IPS offered alternative plans with promising financial commitment to developing countries to halt the progress of China’s BRI.
Though to some extent the B3W, on the whole, is quite palatable as most US allies and strategic partners have nowhere else to go to balance China’s growing economic power and influence across the globe. Just like the IPS, the huge question is how the B3W will be funded and whether members of the G7 are indeed financially committed to this plan.
Syed Tahir Rashdi
Shahdadpur
Published in The Express Tribune, June 26th, 2021.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
