Opinion | G7 summit shows China is still setting the agenda

Name: Belt and Road Initiative explained
Uploaded: 2021-06-16T20:30:00.000Z
Duration: 2 min 35 s
Description: Belt and Road Initiative explained

From the ‘Build Back Better World’ infrastructure plan to vaccines for the developing world to protecting sensitive industries, the West seems to be taking its cues from China

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Workers in Beijing set up flower decorations with a map showing the US, on June 13. Leaders of the world’s largest economies have unveiled an infrastructure plan for the developing world to compete with China’s global initiatives. Photo: AP

Mark Logan

Published: 4:30am, 17 Jun 2021Updated: 4:58am, 17 Jun 2021

China may not have been at the G7 summit in person, but it was very much there in spirit. We will look back at this long weekend in Cornwall, England as the moment when there was more than just a tacit recognition that China has become our era’s agenda-setting country.

In the eyes of many Western policymakers, China was supposed to become more like the West. The United States was to carry on ruling the waves, while simultaneously crafting the international rules. Yet, in many cases it is now China making the waves – if not the rules – with its ideas and others reacting to them.

In a White House press release, US President Biden outlined the US’ plan for strategic competition with China, specifically the “Build Back Better World”, the West’s answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Now you could say better late than never. However, the Belt and Road Initiative was adopted in 2013, almost a decade ago. Of course, in a global competition of ideas, having different alternatives is a good thing for global economic development. It’s better for developing and developed nations to have access to multiple lanes of funding as opposed to a one-way source of finance (or toll gate). Still, we must admit that China has engineered massive impact – whether you like it or not – through the Belt and Road Initiative. The West has duly noted this and is reacting to an agenda set by China.

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Belt and Road Initiative explained

G7 countries have also promised one billion vaccines to poorer countries. Has China already set this agenda, though, having reportedly provided over 60 countries with its own vaccine?

Another development from 2013 was the Communist Party’s Document Number Nine, an internal memo, and its purported fear of Western constitutional democracy. In an increasingly fearful ideological mindset among some G7 country’s elites, there has been an energetic discussion seeking to herald a new cold war.