Can Biden's 'Build Back Better World Partnership' Really Challenge China?

The announcement over the weekend that the G-7 would throw its weight behind a U.S.-led proposal to create an alternative to China's eight-year-old Belt and Road Initiative was met with cautious optimism by international development experts. 

The experts welcomed the focus on helping low- and moderate-income nations develop needed infrastructure but had many questions about how it would be implemented that defied immediate explanation.  The plan aims to "collectively catalyze hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment for low- and middle-income countries in the coming years," according to a White House document. It is part of a broader effort being pushed by President Joe Biden, who said this weekend that the G-7 and other democracies around the world are locked in a battle with autocratic regimes like China and Russia to exert influence with developing countries.  The effort, dubbed the Build Back Better World Partnership, is aimed at "rallying the world's democracies to meet the challenges that the world faces, and deliver for our people and for people, quite frankly, everywhere," Biden said.