Roads, Loans, and Power: The New Battle for the Developing World

Roads, Loans, and Power: The New Battle for
the Developing World
By Jesse Miller
Published December 19, 2025
Great powers have always built more than roads.
The British built railways across India. The United States helped construct the postwar
economic order through institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The Soviet Union financed factories, dams, and infrastructure throughout its sphere of
influence. Infrastructure may look like concrete and steel, but historically it has been something
more: a way for powerful countries to create relationships with countries that need capital.
China understood this dynamic early in the twenty-first century.
In 2013, Beijing launched the Belt and Road Initiative, an enormous collection of infrastructure
and investment projects connecting China with countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin
America, and beyond. Roads, railways, ports, power plants, telecommunications networks, and
other projects became instruments not only of economic development but of international
influence. The Council on Foreign Relations describes the BRI as one of the most ambitious
infrastructure initiatives ever conceived, while noting that it has substantially expanded China’s
economic and political reach.
That presents the United States with an uncomfortable question: what happens when another
country begins building the infrastructure that America is unwilling or unable to finance?
The answer cannot simply be to build an American version of the Belt and Road Initiative. It has
to be to understand why countries accept Chinese investment in the first place.
The developing world has an infrastructure problem. The World Bank has estimated enormous
infrastructure needs across developing economies, and countries that lack reliable
transportation, electricity, and digital connectivity have strong incentives to accept whoever is
willing to finance those projects. China has been willing to fill that gap. The World Bank found
that Belt and Road transportation corridors could increase trade, investment, and living
standards, although the benefits depend heavily on transparency, debt sustainability,
governance, and complementary economic reforms.
That distinction matters.
It is easy to describe the Belt and Road Initiative as simply a Chinese geopolitical weapon. But
that misses why recipient governments participate. A government does not need to believe that
China is benevolent to want a railway. It does not need to support Beijing politically to need
electricity. It does not need to admire the Chinese government to recognize that its population
needs better transportation.
Infrastructure creates influence precisely because infrastructure creates value.

That is the strategic problem facing the United States.
The proposed Global Infrastructure Partnership Program is designed explicitly around this
competition. The bill would create a federal program providing low-interest loans and other
financial support for transportation, energy, and digital infrastructure. It would prioritize
countries willing to limit future participation in Chinese-financed or Chinese-controlled
infrastructure projects. The Department of State and Department of the Treasury would oversee
the program, with financing administered primarily through the U.S. International
Development Finance Corporation.
On paper, that looks like an infrastructure program.
Historically, it is something larger.
It is an attempt to decide who gets to build the next generation of infrastructure in the
developing world.
And whoever builds that infrastructure does not simply receive a construction contract. They
establish relationships with governments, businesses, workers, and entire economies.
That is why the most important question surrounding this bill is not whether infrastructure is
useful. It obviously can be. The question is what happens when development becomes a
competition for influence.
The answer begins with accountability.
China’s Belt and Road projects are not uniformly harmful. The World Bank’s research explicitly
finds potential benefits from improved connectivity, trade, and investment. But the same
research identifies significant risks: debt vulnerabilities, corruption, weak procurement
practices, environmental damage, and insufficient transparency. In some cases, Chinese
companies have received a majority of contracts associated with Chinese-funded projects.
This creates a fundamental tension in infrastructure diplomacy.
A country needs investment. Investment creates development. But the country providing the
investment can also gain economic and political leverage.
That is not uniquely Chinese.
The United States has its own history of using economic relationships to advance strategic
interests. American foreign assistance has never existed completely outside foreign policy. The
Marshall Plan helped rebuild Europe after World War II while simultaneously strengthening
America’s economic and political position against the Soviet Union. American institutions have
repeatedly used economic cooperation to create alliances and reinforce international systems.
The difference is not that one country uses money for influence while the other does not.
The difference is how that influence is constrained.
The United States International Development Finance Corporation provides an example.
DFC-supported projects are subject to environmental, social, labor, human-rights, and
transparency requirements. Its Independent Accountability Mechanism allows affected

communities and workers to raise concerns about DFC-supported projects and request
problem-solving or compliance reviews.
That does not mean American-backed projects are incapable of causing harm. It means that
American development finance contains institutional mechanisms through which affected
communities can challenge certain harms.
That distinction becomes particularly important when comparing two competing models of
development.
One model says: build quickly.
The other says: build, but create rules around how you build.
The second model is slower. Environmental reviews take time. Procurement requirements take
time. Community consultation takes time. Debt-sustainability assessments take time.
Transparency requirements can make projects more expensive and complicated.
But those constraints exist for a reason.
The World Bank has warned that large infrastructure projects can create corruption and
procurement risks and that countries need transparent financing terms and sustainable debt
frameworks to ensure that infrastructure actually improves long-term development.
The proposed bill attempts to incorporate some of those lessons. Its financing would be
conditioned on transparent bidding and debt-sustainability standards. Its annual report would
require the State Department and Treasury to evaluate whether the program is reducing reliance
on China’s Belt and Road Initiative and advancing U.S. strategic interests.
Yet there is an unresolved tension in the bill itself.
Its stated objective is development, but its strategic objective is competition.
Those goals can overlap. They can also conflict.
Imagine a country choosing between two infrastructure projects. One offers the project faster.
The other requires environmental assessments, transparent bidding, and extensive negotiations.
If the second option is significantly slower or more expensive, a government facing immediate
infrastructure shortages may reasonably choose the first.
That means American competition cannot depend entirely on telling developing countries what
they should avoid.
It has to provide something they actually want.
The United States cannot win an infrastructure competition by simply telling countries that
Chinese investment is dangerous. It has to demonstrate that American-backed investment can
produce roads, electricity, telecommunications, and economic growth while giving recipient
countries greater control over their own development.
This is where the bill’s sector limitations become significant.
The proposed program specifically prioritizes transportation, energy, and digital infrastructure.
Those sectors can generate enormous economic benefits, but infrastructure is not synonymous
with development. A road can connect a village to a market, but a functioning school determines

whether children can take advantage of that market. Electricity can power a factory, but
healthcare determines whether workers are healthy enough to work there. Internet access can
connect a country to the global economy, but education determines whether its population can
participate in it.
Development is not just about what gets built.
It is about what those things allow people to do.
That is why America’s historical advantage cannot simply be its ability to offer a different loan.
It has to be its ability to offer a different relationship.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative has demonstrated that infrastructure can create influence on a
global scale. The United States is now considering whether to compete with that influence
through its own development financing. But the history of great-power competition suggests
that the countries caught between competing powers are not merely pieces on a geopolitical
chessboard. They have their own governments, interests, and choices.
The World Bank’s research makes that point particularly clear: the success of infrastructure
initiatives depends heavily on recipient countries themselves, including their institutions,
policies, and ability to manage projects effectively.
That changes the nature of the competition.
The United States does not necessarily need every country to choose Washington over Beijing.
Nor does every Chinese-financed project automatically represent a Chinese strategic victory.
Countries can accept infrastructure from one power while maintaining relationships with
another.
But influence accumulates.
A port creates commercial relationships. A telecommunications network creates technological
relationships. An energy project creates financial relationships. A transportation corridor
creates trade relationships.
One project may mean little.
Hundreds of projects can reshape the international system.
That is what makes the proposed Global Infrastructure Partnership Program historically
significant. It is not simply about whether the United States should spend money overseas. It is
about whether Washington is willing to compete in one of the oldest forms of international
power: the ability to build.
For centuries, powerful nations have understood that influence does not always arrive in the
form of soldiers or diplomats. Sometimes it arrives as a railroad. Sometimes as a port.
Sometimes as a loan.
China has spent more than a decade demonstrating what happens when infrastructure becomes
a central instrument of foreign policy.
The American response therefore presents a choice between two very different approaches to
power. The United States can treat infrastructure as merely an economic transaction, or it can

recognize what history has repeatedly shown: who builds the infrastructure often helps shape
the world around it.
The challenge is making sure that competition does not reduce developing countries to the
objects of that competition.
Because the ultimate measure of an infrastructure project is not which flag flies above the
construction site.
It is what remains after the construction crews leave.
References
Council on Foreign Relations. “China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative.” Council on Foreign Relations, 2022.
Council on Foreign Relations. “How Should the United States Compete With China’s Belt and Road Initiative?” Council on
Foreign Relations.
Raiser, Martin, and Michele Ruta. “Managing the Risks of the Belt and Road.” World Bank, June 20, 2019.
Bandiera, Luca, and Vasileios Tsiropoulos. A Framework to Assess Debt Sustainability and Fiscal Risks under the Belt
and Road Initiative. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8891, 2019.
U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. “Independent Accountability Mechanism.”
U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. “Compliance Review of Policies, Procedures, Statutes & Rights.”