The whole world benefitted from the BRI, not just
Africa. Landlocked countries like those in Central Asia have better
transportation logistics to trade with each other and help them to
progress. Laos and Cambodia are into building high speed rails across
their land to connect with China and each other and benefitting from
these links. It is a win-win situation for them and China.
Most
importantly, the BRI gave China another link outside of the choke points
by sea and large volumes of export from China are now reaching Europe
via the BRI developments across Central Asia. Of course, sabotaging the
BRI had been discreetly fermented over the years. But these
infrastructures do not belong to China alone. They are funded by China
and built by China, but not owed by China. This is important, as
sabotaging the BRI amounts to sabotaging countries involved, which is
not good for the USA.
All they can do to sabotage the BRI is
touting about the debt trap issue, which is going out of fashion, when
countries openly discount the effect. The debts have the infrastructures
to show.
Anonymous
As the benefits accumulated and countries are able to showcase the results, more and more countries will support the BRI and join BRICS to take advantage of the benefits that others are already enjoying by being a part of the BRI and BRICS.
ReplyDeleteFence sitting countries like Indonesia may realize it is missing out on the gravy train, despite trying to be neutral about catering to the big power play. Indonesia is still reluctant to take a stand either to support the USA openly or join BRICS, which it sees as being dominated by China.
This is the mindset of a lot of countries still sitting on the fence. But BRICS is not going to force them with any 'you are either with us or against us' threat. In fact, BRICS must guard well its membership expansion, as some are clearly Trojan Horses, which may be cultivated by the USA to infiltrate the grouping. That will be a bad mistake for BRICS by being too eager to expand its membership base.
As an example, the EU had been exploring the setting up of its own defense bloc, without the USA control and setting the tone, as in NATO. This puts into question the issue of the UK being allowed inside the bloc, which will indirectly allow the USA to have its proxy, the UK, projecting its influence to infiltrate the bloc, whose objective was distancing the USA from EU defense matters.
Countries to watch are those straddling two boats. There is no question of playing around with divided loyalties. It is too dangerous.