Reinhard Bütikofer

Inserted 2 years ago

“The current discussions are very serious. In the EU, the parliament has adopted a global connectivity strategy and connectivity financing has been included in the programming of the [Neighborhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument], the EU's global financing instrument. President Biden has highlighted the issue. India, Japan, Australia, ASEAN, and other partners are highly interested in moving the connectivity agenda forward. China has been exploiting the needs of developing countries, but lamenting about that fact without offering an alternative is useless. You cannot fight something with nothing. The difference between Western connectivity strategy and China's BRI [Belt and Road Initiative] will be threefold: We will insist on high-quality and high-standard projects; we will avoid debt traps; we will mobilize private-sector involvement to strengthen our initiatives.”

Rferl

German politician and the chair of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with China