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The Group of Seven (G-7) nations are confronting China head-on with $600 billion for a global infrastructure program. The new initiative, spread out over 5 years, will serve as a “positive alternative” to Communist China which controls Third World countries through “debt traps.”
The G-7 effort could be seen by some, however, to insert its own ideology on conservative cultures that have not embraced same-sex marriage, reorganization of pronouns, or who still outlaw abortion.
G-7 leaders from the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the European Union unveiled the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) at a summit in Bavaria, Germany, on Sunday.
The White House said that Washington alone would mobilize $200 billion for the PGII “through grants, federal financing, and leveraging private sector investments” by 2027, and “this will only be the beginning.”
“The United States and its G-7 partners will seek to mobilize additional capital from other like-minded partners, multilateral development banks, development finance institutions, sovereign wealth funds, and more,” it said in a statement.
Europe has pledged to mobilize 300 billion Euros ($316 billion) by 2027, while Japan said it aims to allocate $65 billion for the PGII.
But the Chinese debt trap may really be replaced by what many see as a “woke debt trap” with the G-7 inserting liberal western ideologies into their plan. President Joe Biden admitted as much including “gender” into the goals of providing “health and health security, digital connectivity, gender equality and equity, climate and energy security.”
The Euoropean Union and Democrat administrations in the U.S. have long tied their grants and funding to what they see as “reforms.” Those reforms often put pressure on nations to change their laws in regards to same-sex marriage, transgenderism, abortion, and more.
By tying the money to loans that must be paid back, instead of no-strings-attached aid, the pressure would likely increase as a condition of loan issuance or future forgiveness.
“I want to be clear: This isn’t aid or charity; it’s an investment that will deliver returns for everyone, including the American people and the people of all our nations,” Biden asserted at the summit.
“It’ll boost all of our economies, and it’s a chance for us to share our positive vision for the future and let communities around the world see for themselves the concrete benefits of partnering with democracies,” he added.
China’s Transportation Initiative
The PGII was launched a year after Biden introduced the Build Back Better World initiative at the 2021 G-7 summit, at which he said the program would reflect the values of democracies rather than “autocratic lack of values.”
“What’s happening is that China has this Belt and Road Initiative, and we think that there’s a much more equitable way to provide for the needs of countries around the world,” Biden said in June last year.
The U.S. Treasury Department also described the PGII as a “transparent partnership” that will serve to meet the “enormous infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries without trapping them in cycles of debt.”
In recent years, critics have denounced Beijing for using “debt-trap diplomacy” to lure countries into its initiative. Many countries have surrendered pieces of their sovereignty after failing to pay off Chinese debts, notably Sri Lanka, which leased its Hambantota Port to China for 99 years to convert its owed loans of $1.4 billion into equity.
–Metro Voice and Wire services
