Joe Biden Calls for Bigger World Bank To Stave Off China’s Growing Influence
Jose Nino
|
The Biden regime has recently been pushing to grow the World Bank’s lending power in an attempt to combat China’s growing economic influence.
US President Joe Biden and leading officials in his regime have made bolstering the World Bank’s lending capacity as a key part of its geoeconomic agenda to counter China’s rise. The US plan would grow the World Bank’s lending capacity for middle-income and low-income countries by $25 billion, according to US administration officials.
Such a figure could swell up to over $100 billion if other nations make similar promises.
“We’re working to make sure other partners follow our lead,” Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, recently said to reporters.
The latest BRICS summit in South Africa has made policymakers in the West worried about a parallel economic structure that could challenge Western hegemony. Moreover, some developed nations have been irked with the US and the Collective West’s generous aid packages to Ukraine, while they get ignored on the development finance front.
Many of these emerging economies have had to put up with rising interest rates, surging energy prices, among other economic issues. These economic upheavals have compelled developing countries to push for financing on more favorable terms.
“It’s not just a question of responding to China, it’s a question of addressing long-standing global challenges,” Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, said to reporters in New Delhi on September 1, 2023. “We are hopeful that other countries, depending on their financial capacity, will join us and we can scale that up.”
In a similar vein, Sullivan emphasized that the plan to increase the World Bank’s finance was not directed “against China”. However, he also highlighted the necessity for countries to possess alternatives to China’s BRI. The Biden regime asserts countries such as Colombia, Peru, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, and Vietnam could potentially benefit from increased lending from the World Bank.
It’s become clear that the US is engaging in an economic cold war against China. While strong nationalist economic measures should be pursued to decouple from the Chinese economy, the US should avoid the neoconservative temptation of trying to get into a direct, military confrontation with China. This would be a nightmare scenario that could threaten mankind as we know it due to the nuclear implications of such a conflict.
Rational minds should ultimately pursue the policy of America First nationalism — economic decoupling and immigration restriction from China.
Share: