Opinion | How the West can learn from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and vice versa

  • The G7’s Build Back Better World plan, US Blue Dot Network and EU’s connectivity strategy can learn from China in offering more flexibility to the global south
  • Meanwhile, the Belt and Road Initiative can learn to be more transparent

Chinese and local workers on the Mombasa-Nairobi-Naivasha Standard Gauge Railway project in Kenya on January 22, 2020. Photo: Xinhua

More than a year into the pandemic, chaos remains in the once very efficient and “lean” global supply chains. The pandemic has interrupted the normal flow of goods, creating bottlenecks at different stages of the global production network.

The ripple effects of this initial shock have been amplified by the uneven reopenings and lockdowns across the world, the Suez Canal incident and by problems at ports in southern China due to a new Covid-19 surge.
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