Has America Lost Eurasia To China? | Opinion On 2/26/21 at 6:30 AM EST
Joe Biden received a cool reception from Europe this month at both the Group of 7 meeting and the Munich Security Conference. America is back, the new president declared, but no one on the Continent seemed to particularly care.
Biden s efforts to reinvigorate the transatlantic alliance fell flat, especially when he talked about containing militant China. China may be a neo-totalitarian state committing genocide and other crimes against humanity while invading its neighbors with impunity, but in some quarters that does not seem to matter. What matters is that last year, China surpassed the U.S. to become the European Union s largest merchandise trading partner.
China Has an Imperial Overstretch Problem
There are signs that Beijing, by withdrawing lending support in countless high-profile projects, is backing away from what has been called the world’s biggest development plan.
China’s “Project of the Century” may not last another decade.
In late 2013, Chinese ruler Xi Jinping announced the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, two routes connecting China to Africa and Europe.
Since then, the Belt and Road Initiative or BRI, as the projects are now called after being combined, has been extended to everywhere on the planet. China, for instance, has poured tens of billions of dollars of Belt and Road loans into Venezuela. A Chinese party is building a $3 billion container port in Freeport, fewer than 90 miles east of Florida’s Palm Beach. There is even a Polar Silk Road, announced in January 2018. More than a hundred countries are participating in the Belt and Road.