US President Joe Biden proposes a competing ‘Belt and Road’ strategy

US President Joe Biden has proposed a $ 1 trillion initiative by “democratic” countries to join China’s Belt and Road Infrastructure Initiative as tensions between Asian powers and Western powers escalate.

Joe Biden said late Friday that he was submitting a proposal in an appeal to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a scandal over sanctions against abuses against the Uighur minority in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.

“I am basically suggesting that we have similar initiatives from democracy to help communities around the world who really need help,” Biden told reporters, citing Belt and Road.

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In some countries, Beijing’s influence has increased in recent years through loans and projects under the initiative, worrying regional powers and western powers.

China has helped a number of countries build or develop roads, railroads, dams and ports.

President Xi Jinping has pledged to continue “open, environmentally friendly and clean cooperation”, but Chinese banks continue to fund coal projects as Beijing uses initiatives to play coal from abroad.

Between 2000 and 2018, according to the Boston University Global Energy Financing Database, 23.1% of China’s two largest political banks investing in foreign energy projects were spent on coal projects.

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London, reading Biden-Johnson’s call, did not mention the US President’s proposal for a Western reaction to Belt and the Road, but noted that the two leaders would take “significant action” to sanction human rights violators “.” in Xinjiang.