US-led Indo-Pacific deal seeks to challenge China’s Belt and Road
Editor’s note: Center Senior Fellow Grant Newsham was quoted in this piece by the Epoch Times
President Joe Biden announced the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) for “expanding U.S. economic leadership” in the Indo-Pacific on May 23 in Tokyo with a dozen others including the Quad partners, Japan, Australia, and India, that have traditionally kept out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative—the regime’s trillion-dollar infrastructure investment program aimed at bolstering Beijing’s global economic and political clout.
“IPEF will strengthen our ties in this critical region to define the coming decades for technological innovation and the global economy,” the White House said in a statement on the day of the announcement.
The “critical” Indo-Pacific region comprises 38 countries containing 4.3 billion people or 65 percent of world’s total population, accounts for 63 percent of the world’s GDP, and over 50 percent of the world’s maritime trade happens through the region. The U.S. foreign direct investment in the region totaled more than $969 billion in 2020 with the country emerging as the leading exporter of services to the region, according to the White House.
Experts told The Epoch Times that money propels geopolitical assertiveness and IPEF could have greater significance in the region where China has strengthened its economic ties and strategic architecture in the last few decades and has developed partnerships for its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
“The IPEF has been launched by the U.S. with a focus on multipolar politics which is critical to the Asian geopolitical landscape. The inclusion of a diverse group of 12 countries … shows that the goal is to promote decoupling from China across the
Indo-Pacific region,” Jagannath P. Panda, head of the Stockholm Center for South
Asian and Indo-Pacific A airs at the Sweden-based Institute for Security & Development Policy, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The Biden administration through the IPEF is thus attempting to build economic clout in the Indo-Pacific along with its military and political presence, according to Panda.
Within the Indo-Pacific region, 25 East Asian and Pacific countries, and six Southeast Asian countries have signed for China’s BRI.
CSIS experts, Matthew P. Goodman and William Alan Reinsch, said in a January report that IPEF will allow the United States to operationalize the Build Back Better World (B3W) program in the Indo-Pacific.
B3W is the United States’ alternative to China’s BRI, and was endorsed by G7 nations in June last year.
“In light of the massive need for infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region—as much as $26 trillion between 2016 and 2030, according to the Asian Development Bank— and the challenges posed by China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), the Biden administration is right to make this an element of the IPEF,” said Goodman and Reinsch.
Grant Newsham, a director at One Korea Network and a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy, however is critical of the IPEF, saying it means “very little” for the U.S. foreign policy.
“At most it shows the Biden administration is paying attention to the Indo-Pacific. But in practical terms it is unclear what the benefits are for anyone who signs up for IPEF,” Newsham told The Epoch Times in an email.
“Maybe there’s some benefit to U.S. foreign policy by getting together and talking to other countries about things IPEF related. But that’s not much. All in all, it makes the Americans look kind of befuddled,” said Newsham.
Taiwan was excluded from the IPEF, but Washington and Taipei on June 1 announced a new trade initiative which could pave the way to a future free trade agreement. Newsham described this development as “more significant” and potentially more “beneficial to U.S. foreign policy.”
