The Belt and Road Initiative primarily aims to link the vigorous East Asian economic zone with the developed European economic zone more closely. Second, the Trump administration attached great importance to the expansion of the Belt and Road program in Europe and intended to work with the EU and other powers to jointly counterbalance China. With the support of the US, India has strengthened institutional security relations with Australia and Japan, with the India-Australian relationship, in particular, getting an obvious boost (Lakshman 2019). It adopts Southeast Asian and Pacific Island countries as focal points and increased input in countries along the Bay of Bengal, Sri Lanka in particular. They believed China is using the Belt and Road Initiative to promote the internationalization of the RMB and Chinese technological standards (Kania 2019).<\/p>\n
MDB loans can help tackle environmental sustainability and social safeguard issues and promote transparency and better governance in the developing countries. Consequently, China\u2019s state-owned banks and firms have played a dominant role in infrastructure financing and construction overseas, while the United States and other Western countries have committed very little money to the PGII, since most of the funds are expected to come from private companies. China and the United States are now competing fiercely for influence over the developing countries across the world. This paltry amount is a far cry from the billions in infrastructure investment promised by Biden\u2019s original announcement. In June 2021, at the G7 summit held in the United Kingdom, Biden unveiled the Build Back Better World initiative (known as the B3W), focusing on addressing climate change, digital infrastructure, gender equality and healthcare system issues. In Biden\u2019s view, infrastructure development will be an important arena for the US to compete with China.<\/p>\n
In particular, he accused projects such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor of undermining regional security. In particular, as the US worries that China is promoting a \u201cpolitical rise\u201d after realizing its \u201ceconomic rise,\u201d some US politicians and experts have claimed that China\u2019s so-called \u201csharp power\u201d or \u201cinfluence operations\u201d constitute a major threat to the political system and values of democratic countries including the US (Cardenal et al. 2017). Besides a \u201cprimary challenge,\u201d China is also regarded by US policymakers as an all-round global strategic competitor. The NSS asserted that the US is facing a new era of \u201cgreat power competition\u201d and defined China as a \u201crevisionist power\u201d and \u201cstrategic competitor\u201d (The White House 2017).<\/p>\n
Strategists including Daniel Russel, former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs and vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to China\u2019s BRI ambition, and the debt crisis in some countries has become prominent. The Biden administration is imposing more pressure on China in a key post-pandemic era when BRI faces adjustment. It put China\u2019s push for global power as the preeminent threat, and said that China\u2019s growing influence is one of the biggest threats the US faces. It is worth pointing out that as a Democrat, Biden\u2019s concept of competition with China is heavily ideologically driven. Ely Ratner, foreign policy and defense advisor to the US secretary of defense and former executive vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, said in February 2021 that China is a matrix problem that has penetrated into all fields including economy, technology, ideology, national security and diplomacy. It focuses more on the systematic, long-term and urgent nature of major power competition and emphasizes the importance of competing with China from a \u201cposition of strength\u201d.<\/p>\n