China Invites The United States To Join The Belt And Road Initiative

Beijing wants to combine Build Back Better World with the BRI, offer comes following 50^th anniversary of Nixon’s visit to China and the signing of the ‘Shanghai Communique.’

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has stated that China is willing to work with the United States on a G-7-led global infrastructure plan and welcomes Washington to join its Belt and Road Initiative.

“We are also willing to consider coordinating with the US ‘Build Back Better World’ initiative to provide the world with more high-quality public goods” Wang said in a video message at an event for the 50th anniversary of the Shanghai Communique, which marked the normalizing of relations between US and China. Then US President Richard Nixon travelled to Beijing to meet Mao Zedong in February 1972.

Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon, 1972

Wang said China is also open to the US participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Global Development Initiative, a call by Chinese President Xi Jinping last year for all countries to work towards sustainable development.

The Group of Seven (G-7) richest democracies, consisting of the US and its allies, proposed the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative in June 2021 to help developing countries meet infrastructure needs, as they sought to counter China’s growing influence. That is seen as an alternative to rival China’s BRI, which was launched by Xi in 2013.

More than 100 countries have signed agreements with China to cooperate in BRI projects like railways, ports, highways, and other infrastructure.

Wang urged Washington to work with China in the Asia-Pacific to build a “family of openness, inclusiveness, innovation, growth, connectivity and win-win cooperation” rather than turn the region into one of conflict and confrontation as has happened in Eastern Europe.

The Shanghai Communique, a document which marked the end of isolation between both countries and issued during then US President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China, meant that two major powers with different social systems were willing to coexist peacefully. The event is being celebrated by Amcham in China and was marked by a special celebratory webinar, attended by Dezan Shira & Associates, last week.

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