Competing Directly With Belt and Road Initiative Spells Disaster for Western Taxpayers

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at the "Global Infrastructure" side event as Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau look on during the G-7 summit at Schloss Elmau near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, on June 26, 2022. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Commentary

U.S. President Joe Biden’s announcement at the 2022 G7 meeting that $600 billion would be given to the developing world should set off alarm bells across the West.

What is driving this massive transfer of wealth from the developed world to developing countries?

The reason is the U.S. State Department and Biden managed to persuade G7 leaders in Germany that Western democracies need to match Beijing’s bribery of the developing world.

The State Department argues that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is successfully recruiting “third world” leaders into a maturing Beijing-Moscow bloc, and it was, therefore, imperative the West create a counter-BRI—in this case, the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII).

So the G7 has effectively announced a new kind of “Cold War” to win over the underdeveloped world between Beijing and the West.

So with the BRI expanding China’s influence and control over ever-growing portions of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific, the State Department has decided to get back into the business of so-called “development aid,” which it hopes will buy the support of third world leaders.

In its previous Cold War iteration, competition between America and the Soviets saw the building of substantial foreign aid industries, which then shovelled enormous amounts of money into the developing world, where it then produced dependency and corrupt elites who would lord it over their impoverished populations. But importantly, it did not create much “development.”

Not ‘Aid or Charity’ Apparently

Biden claimed that this new G7 development industry was not “aid or charity.” Perhaps he felt compelled to say this because the old foreign aid industry was discredited precisely because it became a system of “well-meaning” but hopelessly ineffectual charity.

It produced dependency and poor governance and enriched both corrupt third-world leaders and Western bankers who happily accepted these leaders’ unethical deposits.

The old Cold War foreign aid industry was a shameful system that cost Western taxpayers a fortune simply to prop up ineffectual and corrupt Afro-Asian elites, who then turned around and bit the hand that fed them by attacking the West as imperialist, colonial racists.

A more foolish foreign policy is hard to imagine.

The billions handed out by the West and Soviets simply paid for the survival of bad governments. The fact that all this money did not manage to buy solid “allies” or result in helpful third world “development” was scandalous. Now with PGII, the G7 wants to rebuild this foreign aid industry and recreate the second round of scandalous bribery.

Also, as the dust settled from the G7 announcement, one could feel the excitement building in capital cities around the developing world, where third-world elites realized the good old days of money pouring into their coffers were about to return.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping (front C) poses with African leaders, including Malawi's President Arthur Peter Mutharika (2nd row, 2nd R), during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing on Sept. 3, 2018. How Hwee Young/AFP/Getty Images

Can the West Outspend Beijing?

For underdeveloped countries that have long demonstrated that they cannot get it together, it is party time once again because they can now play Beijing and the G7 off against each other to see which of BRI or PGII offers them the biggest bribes.

It is worth noting that the plan Biden took to the G7 appears to be a rebadging of a part of the “Build Back Better” program, which was blocked by the Republicans.

Significantly, the plan’s vision embedded in PGII encodes all the usual left-wing rhetoric about climate change, Green New Deal spending, gender politics, and women’s equality. From another perspective, Western taxpayers are now paying for the rollout of left-wing projects across the developing world.

In the United States, this amounts to a $200 billion contribution of taxpayers’ money. The rest of the $600 billion funds will come from the other G7 members and through leveraging private sector investments in areas like digital communication and mining for precious earths.

In contrast, given Beijing does not have to worry about taxpayer revolts when it throws money around the developing world, it is a moot point as to whether the West can ever realistically outspend China in any bribery competition to win over third-world leaders.

Getting involved in a bribery contest with an authoritarian regime not accountable to voters or taxpayers seems foolish indeed. Any realistic chance of competing in this field would require democratic governments to start printing cash en masse—in turn, driving up inflation even higher.

Taxpayers Need to Keep an Eye on Where the Money Flows

It is noteworthy that the PGII projects so far announced by the G7 involve a heavy weighting towards climate change, clean energy infrastructure (including solar and battery projects), low emission transportation, clean energy supply chains, gender equity, women’s employment and childcare, health infrastructures, and building a global digital-communication infrastructure plus submarine cables that China cannot hack into.

Western taxpayers should pay serious attention to these PGII plans to ensure they meet the expectations voters have for how their dollars are being spent.

One can only hope that this time, taxpayers will pay more attention to the failings of foreign aid and third-world development programs than they did last time and avoid breeding mass corruption, waste, and poor governance in distant lands.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.