China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been depicted as a modern-day Marshall Plan, a mega infrastructure project, or a masterplan to take over the world. But in reality, the BRI is nothing more than a branding strategy for China’s overseas investments and foreign policy—and one whose projects on the ground haven’t been particularly successful.
This didn’t stop Western observers and politicians from transforming it into a formidable boogeyman that demanded an urgent answer. As a result, over the past few years, there has been a flurry of attempts at a Western-led competitor to the BRI, from the Blue Dot Network to the Trilateral Partnership for Infrastructure Investment, without any of them achieving much success let alone as much recognition as the much-misunderstood BRI. The most recent such proposal is Build Back Better World (B3W), a U.S.-led G-7 initiative that wants to become a green, transparent, and sustainable alternative to the BRI, helping build infrastructure in the developing world.
