GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

The West Needs to Put Its Money Where Its Mouth Is

Jul 20, 2016 | 08:04 GMT

Western investment in global infrastructure
With the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China is helping its neighbors unlock their resources while paving its own way to the Middle East, Indian Ocean and Europe.

(FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)

Between the surprise Brexit vote and the unexpected rise of Donald Trump, it would appear that the world is turning populist and isolationist, with regions fracturing and trust declining. But that narrative is false. Many regions of the world -- including Europe -- continue to expand and integrate. Outside of Europe, the leaders of North America's three states just held a major summit outlining their next steps in trade and energy cooperation. From Southeast Asia's 650 million people -- who have just ratified an ASEAN Economic Community with free labor mobility -- to the East African Community of 250 million across a half-dozen countries, post-colonial regions are burying the hatchet and growing together, not apart, to achieve greater economies of scale and bargaining power. Most fundamentally, China is physically binding together the more than one dozen countries on its periphery and beyond into Central Asia through the Asian Infrastructure Investment...

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