U.S. President Joe Biden spoke to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and discussed that democratic countries should provide an alternative to China’s infrastructure strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Key Points
- Biden told his traveling press corps after he landed in Delaware for the weekend that I and Boris talked about China and the competition being faced engaging in the Belt and Road Initiative.
- Biden suggested we should have a similar initiative coming from the democratic states, helping those communities around the world.
- In March 2021, the U.S. and its Quad partners (Australia, India, and Japan) had committed to a new initiative between democratic states with an aim to provide 1 billion vaccines in South East Asia and the Pacific for covering vaccine shortages.
- In the year 2019, the Trump administration had floated an infrastructure scheme the Blue Dot Network to vet projects and promote private-sector-led infrastructure development in the Indo Pacific. However, the scheme is not set up to directly finance projects on its own.
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
The Belt and Road Initiative is an international infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in the year 2013 to invest in around 70 countries and international organizations. BRI is seen as a centerpiece of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy, who originally announced the strategy as the “Silk Road Economic Belt” during an official visit to Kazakhstan in the year 2013.
