## 4 Discussion and Conclusions  
In an era marked by increasing geopolitical fragmentation, digitalisation, and a heightened awareness of human equality, the 21 st century demands more than just physical development. It also calls for the enhancement of societal well-being, particularly in developing economies. Alternative infrastructure initiatives like PGII, GG, FOIP/PQI, and 3 SI--driven by Western, European, and East Asian powers--aim to promote multilateralism and competition in delivering quality cross-border critical infrastructure. These efforts emphasise high standards of transparency, governance, sustainability and the diversification of risks in areas where China's BRI has traditionally fallen short. Yet, these initiatives involve trade-offs related to efficiency, coordination, inclusivity, and incentives. Given these trade-offs, we cannot claim that any single model is superior to another in terms of achieving welfare-enhancing outcomes and bridging development gaps. As the BRI maintains its first-mover advantage with well-established physical and digital links, and shows improvements in addressing its deficiencies, it exerts pressure on newer initiatives to truly offer competitive advantages to developing economies and to demonstrate a robust financing framework. Moreover, the BRI already boasts approximately USD 1.175 trillion (Nedopil, 2025) in its extensive construction and investment portfolio while other initiatives are slow to pick up the pace (see Table 1). Given the pressing needs for economic growth and energy security in developing countries, it is important to ask the following: to what extent do the risks of substandard construction, project abandonment, non-performing loans, and disruption to local communities' lives constitute an acceptable trade-off for BRI-funded infrastructure projects? This reflects a broader infrastructure dilemma--one that often intersects with NIMBY sentiments and is not unique to the BRI. All major infrastructure initiatives must navigate complex trade-offs, requiring consensus-building and the alignment of incentives across multiple stakeholders: national governments, local communities, public funders, and private investors. While initiatives like the BRI and its alternatives can promote connectivity and improve living standards through geopolitical and economic soft power, they also entail risks related to financing, regulatory alignment, and the potential erosion of local sovereignty. These dynamics inevitably produce winners and losers. It is therefore essential to evaluate such projects through a Kaldor-Hicks lens, ensuring that the benefits to winners are, in principle, sufficient to compensate for the losses of those adversely affected. It can be argued that the conflict between the adverse impacts of NIMBY facilities on local communities hosting them and societies at large demanding economic growth comes from China's inexperience in dealing with legal frameworks that are different from its own ([PERSON], 2022). While the US- and EU-led or supported initiatives have yet to prove their competitiveness in the global market of infrastructure initiatives, they benefit from longer histories of domestic infrastructure development and facility siting with a variety of legal frameworks (Fair, 2025; European Commission, 2014). However, these come at the cost of slower project rollout due to multilateral cooperation and coordination, stricter standards, transparency requirements, and bureaucratic procedures, which diminishes the original purpose of these initiatives--to bring about economic prosperity swiftly by connecting developed and developing economies. For many developing countries, the ideal approach likely lies somewhere between these extremes--ensuring both timely financing and implementation (which can only happen with robust coordinating mechanisms, project timelines, and reliable capital sources) while safeguarding quality, sustainability, and fairness. Fairness in this context can be meaningfully assessed through CBA using WTP or WTA methods.