This year’s G7 summit, held in Carbis Bay, England, earlier this month, has amplified the message of the US’ recommitment to its alliances and the broader multilateral system. US President Joe Biden arrived in Europe with a formidable set of challenges, including rallying coordinated responses to an increasingly assertive China and an aggressive Russia, and the daunting specter of the climate crisis — key policy issues that were largely absent during the four-year presidency of Donald Trump.
Importantly, the inclusion of Australia, India, South Korea and South Africa at the summit points to the importance of developments in the Indo-Pacific region to advanced democracies around the globe. It also reflects the broader conversation about a new “concert of powers.” Holding the G7 presidency, the UK has proposed revamping the G7 as the “Democratic 10,” or “D10” for short, with the addition of Canberra, New Delhi and Seoul.
As Taiwan plays an important role in the socioeconomic and security landscapes of the Indo-Pacific region, any comprehensive strategy for engagement with the region needs to remain inclusive of this archipelago democracy.
To this end, the G7’s newly announced Build Back Better World Partnership (B3W) merits closer examination — and invites actionable policy ideas for allowing Taiwan to meaningfully contribute to the partnership.
B3W is an initiative aimed at meeting the infrastructure needs of low and middle-income countries, with a particular focus on four key areas — climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality — to be implemented by the G7 and “other like-minded partners.”
As Beijing continues its global overseas lending and investment push, B3W is naturally regarded as a direct alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Yet, while China continues to advertise its BRI lending as “no strings attached,” transparency and financial, environmental and social sustainability would constitute the core normative underpinnings of a value-driven B3W.
The White House says that “B3W will be global in scope, from Latin America and the Caribbean to Africa to the Indo-Pacific.”
While developing countries in the western hemisphere have remained important to Taiwan’s foreign policy — nine of Taipei’s 15 remaining diplomatic allies are in Latin America and the Caribbean — Taiwan is best equipped to contribute to B3W in its own neighborhood, or the 18 countries included in the New Southbound Policy (NSP), President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) flagship foreign policy initiative.
The NSP lays out four tasks: promoting economic collaboration, conducting talent exchange, sharing resources and forging regional links. Investments in soft and hard infrastructure are explicitly mentioned as key to the realization of two aforementioned tasks in particular: fostering economic cooperation and linking regional markets.
Interestingly, Washington appears to have already recognized Taiwan’s infrastructural prowess. Announced in September last year, the Infrastructure Financing Framework created by the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US has enabled the two nations to cooperate on infrastructure finance and market building, and facilitate infrastructure investment in third countries within the Indo-Pacific region.
The NSP constitutes a flagship foreign policy initiative of the Tsai administration, and is a key instrument for shaping the nation’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific region.
The aforementioned framework could thus be regarded as a tangible manifestation of complementarity of the NSP and the US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific, and, in turn, the bedrock for Taiwan’s inclusion in multilateral development projects executed under the umbrella of B3W.
As fatuous as it would be to argue that Taiwan’s infrastructure development deals could compete with the magnitude of China’s BRI funding, we should not lose sight of the fact that Taiwan’s unique know-how can be its competitive advantage.
Having long enjoyed a strong reputation as a technology hub, Taiwan can actively contribute to projects that require sound information, communications and technology infrastructure. Citizen-centric software services and solutions for smart cities are one example thereof; existing partnerships for smart cities cooperation, such as that between New Taipei and Indonesia’s West Java province, or Taipei and Malaysia’s Selangor state, would be a productive starting point for broader, multilateral cooperation.
Additionally, when considering the potential complementarity of Taiwan’s NSP and the G7’s B3W, it is imperative to recognize the centrality of environmental sustainability in both frameworks. While carrying out investments in a manner consistent with achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement is one the guiding principles of B3W, forming expert teams on environmental infrastructure has been the focus of the NSP promotion plan.
In his conversation with Sandra Oudkirk (孫曉雅), US Senior Official for APEC and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, Taiwan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) underscored the importance of “climate-resilient connectivity projects,” as “Taiwan recognizes climate change and resilience to be among the region’s top priorities.”
This serves as an important signal about synergies in the normative underpinnings of Taiwan’s existing developmental cooperation framework and the B3W partnership.
Involvement in projects directly challenging the climate crisis in collaboration with the G7 would allow Taiwan to capitalize on its achievements to date. The Home Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Project in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, supported by the International Cooperation and Development Fund, buttressed the Marshall Islands’ ambitious target of 20 percent renewable energy by last year, and clearly demonstrated Taiwan’s commitment to supporting green solutions.
Admittedly, the new developmental cooperation landscape painted by the G7 is not free of blots. Internal rifts within the group, and the parallel rise of alternative institutions such as the G20, has led many academics and pundits to question the value of these groups.
Moreover, directly countering China’s BRI carries the risk of inadvertently rebooting Cold War narratives. To avoid threatening the sorely needed collective action on development and climate goals, B3W needs to take off as a truly multilateral initiative, and avoid becoming a mere tool in great power rivalry.
Paradoxically, these same concerns also illustrate why joining B3W would not only bolster Taiwan’s regional standing — effectively safeguarding its very survival — but also render the new partnership more sustainable. Taiwan’s contributions to date demonstrate that the nation is ready, willing and able to do more in the Indo-Pacific region, and it is equally well-equipped to serve as a like-minded partner of the G7.
The time is ripe for advanced democracies to embrace the flexibility of the coalitional approach to world order, which would allow for the broadening of the scope of multilateral projects and amplify voices of otherwise neglected regional stakeholders such as Taiwan.
Marcin Jerzewski is a research fellow at the Taiwan NextGen Foundation, a Taipei and Chiayi-based policy think tank focusing on Taiwan’s soft power, the New Southbound Policy and the Bilingual Nation 2030 Plan. Chen Kuan-ting is chief executive officer of the Taiwan NextGen Foundation.
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