washington the us fears that the financing structure of chinas one belt one road initiative over time will compromise on the sovereignty of the nations where those infrastructure projects are being undertaken a senior us official told lawmakersthe one belt one road obor is a pet initiative of chinese president xi jinping it is essentially a statefinanced statebacked infrastructure initiative to build infrastructure across central asia and other parts of the indopacificas such there is a number of initiatives across the indopacific region to build the capacity of countries and generate awareness so that countries do not fall into debt trap or their sovereignty is not compromised by their such projects said alex wong the deputy assistant secretary of state for east asian and pacific affairswhen we look at the belt and road initiative the united states is less concerned about where the money comes from or from which country the money comes from he told members of the senate foreign relations committees subcommittee on east asia the pacific and international cybersecurity policy during a congressional hearingthe united states he said is much more concerned how the financing for the infrastructure is structured and how the particular projects are conceived and implementedso were concerned with the financial the debt structuring because if these deals and financing is not structured in a way that recipient nations across the indopacific can pay them back in a sustainable manner what well see over time is that these projects will compromise the sovereignty of these nations to the detriment of their national security wong saidand were concerned about the particular projects he said responding to a question from senator scott gardner who wanted to know about the us strategy on countering the belt road initiative of chinaaccording to wong the us has a number of efforts across the indopacific and truly around the world to build a capacity of partner governments to understand lifecycle costing to understand what a proper bid process is up to international standards and to understand how they can structure debtthey are being helped to understand a harder bargain to ensure that they preserve their sovereignty preserve their economies over time as they partner with other nations or private sector actors on their infrastructurehe said the us wants to ensure that countries conceived these projects on economic growth and are truly feasible economicallythat theyre connected to the economies of these nations and that theyre focused not on certain strategic designs but on economic designs because if theyre not conceived and implemented in that manner what well see is that these projects wont lift up the nations economies in fact weigh them down he told lawmakersthats the message the united states is bringing to its partners it is also putting its capacity building efforts behind this effort