Remember “Global Gateway”, the EU’s answer to China’s Belt and Road initiative?
Well the European Parliament just published a report on it: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-10-2026-0045_EN.html in which they express concern “that a number of Global Gateway projects are being implemented by Chinese companies in direct violation of the initiative’s objective of presenting an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative.”
When even your alternative to the BRI accidentally becomes part of the BRI
Development initiatives should almost by definition be positive-sum, not zero sum: the moment you define success as “not China” rather than “good outcomes for partner countries,” you basically kill the very spirit of your initiative - and that’s probably a big reason why Global Gateway is such a failure to date.
Just go through the report: it spends considerable energy on “is China involved?” and relatively little on “are poor people getting better infrastructure?” That ordering of priorities tells you everything you need to know…
It almost seems like cooperation is not only a viable form of economic progress but a superior one to the capitalist competition of the west…
Holy shit. The entire point of the BRI was to reduce dependence of the third world on the first world. It was to create trading partners within the third world in general, not just for china.
The EU was not part of the third world. Any incentive to compete with the BRI will only end up furthering third world sovereignty.
Such is multi-polarity.
the moment you define success as “not China” rather than “good outcomes for partner countries,” you basically kill the very spirit of your initiative
That’s it, common European L because racism.
