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Seneglese and Chinese workers observe a ceremony at the national theater construction site financed by China on February 14, 2009 in Dakar, during a visit by Chinese president Hu Jintao and Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade. Joint projects such as this have defined the BRI, but have now invited backlash and reorientation. AFP via Getty Images Over the past decade, China has entrenched itself worldwide through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by building extensive transport, energy, and industrial infrastructure and becoming a leading trading partner and creditor by the mid-2020s. Yet the BRI model, centered on state-backed lending, opaque contracting, and the export of excess Chinese industrial capacity, has revealed structural weaknesses that motivated the creation of BRI 2.0. Rising debt burdens, environmental damage, limited participation of local firms, and increasingly negative public sentiment have generated demand for alternatives. Recognizing the impracticality of competing with China on infrastructure, the United States has adopted an asymmetric strategy. Rather than replicating Beijing’s capital-intensive approach, Washington has leveraged its comparative advantages in soft infrastructure, technology, standards, and institutional capacity. Rather than building a hospital or reservoir, America could train nurses or engineers. The G7’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) has become the primary vehicle for this strategy to compete with China. While the advantages of PGII and BRI are being revealed through international competition, energy infrastructure and dynamics complicate previous assumptions on the BRI and PGII. The Trump administration’s unabashed embrace of hydrocarbons has translated into an open desire to accelerate funding for energy infrastructure as part of America’s foreign policy, thereby violating the asymmetrical foundation of the PGII. China, which is trying to lessen its dependence on vulnerable energy imports, is more interested in building dependence on Chinese green-tech exports and Chinese norms. This awkwardly puts Chinese and American energy…

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Filed under: News - @ January 27, 2026 7:27 pm