Ye Comments on President Biden’s Infrastructure Package
Min Ye, Associate Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was quoted in a Politico article on President Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure package and how it will help the United States compete with China’s infrastructure gains.
The article, titled “‘Powerful signal’: Biden’s infrastructure bill sends message to China,” discusses the different facets of Biden’s plan, which include investment in rail, roads, electric vehicle infrastructure, airports, broadband internet, and more. China has outpaced the U.S. in infrastructure spending recently, and the article outlines how Biden’s plan will put the U.S. more on track to compete in key sectors that “China has been laser-focused on with vast allocations over decades.”
Ye argues that the U.S. should not base it’s infrastructure spending on beating China’s investments as the country is still “quite behind the U.S., in particular in [central] and western China.” Ye also cautioned U.S. policymakers not to oversell the China threat in relation to the country’s infrastructure investment, despite its appeal to both Democrats and Republicans. That being said, she also noted that the infrastructure bill’s passage would validate one of Biden’s biggest talking points: “Democracy can deliver.”
The full article can be read on Politico‘s website.
Min Ye is the author of Diasporas and Foreign Direct Investment in China and India (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and The Making of Northeast Asia (with Kent Calder, Stanford University Press, 2010). Her most recent book, titled The Belt Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China: 1998–2018 (Cambridge University Press 2020), explores the motivations and strategies behind China’s global economic expansion and considers the implications of the country’s status as a global power on both China and the world. Read more about Ye on her faculty profile.