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President Biden spoke with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week to pitch a massive project to challenge China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road. It was launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013.
Al Jazeera reported Biden told Johnson that democratic countries in the region should have a plan that rivals China’s.
The Council on Foreign Relations refers to BRI as a colossal infrastructure project that could “usher in a new era of trade and growth for economies in Asia and beyond.”
The CFR report said that under former President Trump, Washington voiced concern about the initiative but “struggled to offer governments in the region a more appealing economic vision.”
Jacob J. Lew, a visiting professor at Columbia University who was the U.S. Treasury secretary, wrote in Barron’s last week that the implementation of the BRI is a serious risk for host countries due to “worrying debt levels” and the “displacement of U.S. companies” to give way to an “increasing dependence on China.”
President Biden said he suggested a similar initiative “pulling from the Democratic states, helping those communities around the world that, in fact, need help.”
Reuters reported last week that Biden made it clear Beijing would not surpass Washington, D.C., in power during his term in the White House, and he is willing to invest heavily to follow through on the promise.
“China has an overall goal… to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world. That’s not going to happen on my watch because the United States is going to continue to grow,” Biden said, according to Reuters.
Biden insisted he does not want a confrontation.
The Al Jazeera report, citing a Refinitiv database, reported that more than 100 countries in the region have signed on with Chinese projects, which will focus on infrastructure projects like railways and highways.
TREND FORECAST: The United States and Europe will lose in the economic challenge against China. While President Biden stated that Beijing would not surpass Washington in power during his term in the White House, that has zero to do with U.S. policy or the Biden administration.
The hard facts and analyses project China to surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by 2028.
As we have long noted, the business of America has been at war, and the business of China is business. The 20th century was the American century, and as we have forecast the 21st century will be China’s… and one of our 10 Top Trends for 2021, is “China 2021.”
As we have been reporting, former President Bill Clinton brought China into the World Trade Association in 2000 (which Senator Joe Biden supported), and China’s GDP at the time accounted for a 3.6-percent share of the world’s economy. Now, just 20 years later, it has grabbed a nearly 18-percent share.
Thus, as China expands its domestic economy and continues to develop its BRI, it will continue to grow in financial and military power as the United States and Europe decline.