Among the “advisors” listed on the sleepy website of something known as the Belt and Road International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) is a senior official at Michael Bloomberg’s eponymous philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies. The official, Antha Williams, the head of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ environmental programs, serves as an adviser to the co-chairs of the organization, who include a Chinese Communist Party official responsible for the country’s Ministry of Ecology and the Environment.
Read the fine print, and it quickly becomes clear that the BRIGC, established jointly by China and what it describes as “international partners,” is an effort to draw global support for the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative under the banner of environmentalism.
“The main goal of BRIGC is to promote international consensus understanding, cooperation and concerted actions to achieve green development of BRI, to integrate sustainable development into the BRI,” the organization’s website states.
Chinese president Xi Jinping established the BRIGC in April 2019 at China’s second Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. Under the organization’s founding charter, China’s State Ministry of Ecology and Environment and Ministry of Civil Affairs provide “business guidance” that the coalition must accept. Controlled by the Chinese government—the organization’s charter stipulates that it is subject to the authority of the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and the Environment and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and it must comply with all CCP laws—it is aimed at cultivating support and involvement from international groups, including Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bezos Earth Fund, whose president, Andrew Steer, is a co-chairman.
National security experts who spoke to the Free Beacon warned that such a collaboration creates a host of national security concerns and makes American institutions more vulnerable to Chinese influence campaigns. They added that the Belt and Road Initiative and BRIGC have been carefully constructed to boost China’s strategic power rather than to reduce emissions or address global warming. “The Belt and Road Initiative is the CCP’s geopolitical theory of victory,” Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute who specializes in U.S.–China relations, told the Washington Free Beacon, adding that it is a “national security threat to the United States and the fact that any U.S. entity would partner with it, let alone fund it, is really concerning.” […]
— Read More: freebeacon.com
