G7 agreed on major aid plan for low- and middle-income countries to counter China’s advance

US President Joe Biden convinced the rest of the G7 leaders, gathered at a summit in Carbis Bay (UK), to launch a major infrastructure plan to counter China’s advance. In this direction, G7 leaders agreed on Saturday to launch the “Build Back Better for the World” initiative to “meet the enormous infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries,” the White House said in a statement.

More specifically, it will target countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and the Indo-Pacific. “The different G7 partners will have different geographic orientations, but the sum of the initiative will encompass low- and middle-income countries around the world,” the White House revealed.

The plan wants to be youAn alternative to the Chinese “One Belt, One Road” project, which aims to revitalize the so-called Silk Road by modernizing infrastructure and telecommunications to improve connectivity between Asia and Europe. The objective is go beyond the Chinese proposal “offering a better quality option”.

The US government has indicated that its infrastructure initiative is a collaboration between large democracies to carry out a project guided by “values, with high and transparent standards.”

The plan “helps reduce the more than $ 40 billion in infrastructure needs that the developing world needs, and which have been exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic,” said the White House.

The American proposal It aims to mobilize private sector capital to promote projects in four areas: climate, health security, digital and gender equality, in addition to having investments from financial institutions.

Biden está poniendo el foco sobre China, compite por la hegemonía mundial frente a EEUU, durante esta cumbre de los líderes de las democracias más industrializadas del mundo (EEUU, el Reino Unido, Alemania, Francia, Italia, Canadá, Japón, más la European Union).

Earlier, a senior Washington administration official criticized China’s One Belt, One Road plan in statements to reporters, considering its lack of transparency, poor labor and environmental standards, and reportedly left many countries in the dark. a worse situation.

In parallel, Biden is pressuring the G7 to take “concrete measures” against “forced labor” in Xinjiang province (northwest China), where the Uyghur minority lives. The president wants “to make the world understand that we believe that these practices are an affront to human dignity and a scandalous example of unfair economic competition from China”, noted the American source.

Development…

KEEP READING: