Will the European Union love China's Silk Routes?

Since 1949, most European countries have geopolitically seen China through the eyes of the United States. While a few countries occasionally opened another path, their efforts never lasted for a long time.

Time and time again, the United States establishment reiterated the People's Republic of China as a rival power. In 1957, the European Community, then Union, adopted this Manichean vision. But after the Chinese economic reform in December 1978 and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Western containment policy has become more and more obsolete. How is it possible to understand why the political elites in the West are refusing full cooperation with China while the European and Chinese peoples are working more and more together with confidence?

Photo taken on April 11, 2017 shows a cargo of China Railway Express being moved at Duisburg Intermodal Terminal (DIT) in Duisburg, western Germany. Since "YUXIN'OU" (Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe) railway line came into use in 2011, China-Europe freight train services, with a growing number of trans-continental railway lines and increasing cargo volume, have become important to the ancient Silk Road.[Photo: Xinhua]

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the world's biggest economic and social project. The statements by Donald Trump to renew the 1946 Truman policy cannot stop it.

The European history of the BRI is older than the BRI itself. It started with the impressive increase of Chinese investments in transport some twenty years ago. Public opinion really understood its importance when the Chinese company Cosco became an operator of several terminals in the Greek seaport of Piraeus in 2009.

While the scattered initiatives of Chinese companies greatly concerned European geopoliticians, China suddenly revealed, in the autumn of 2013, an incredibly ambitious global project: the renewal of the antique Silk Routes by land and sea. These ancient paths have been the wondrous dreams of schoolchildren in the world for centuries. In the future, a Polar Silk Road will be added. Amongst the European high-level political circles, the Chinese announcement caused misunderstanding, then hostility, then irony, and finally participation. The EU passed from an antiquated containment to cooperation between 2013 and 2016. This rapid change of mind set required only three years!

A bit of history. The misunderstanding of 2013 and 2014 gave way to hostility. Before the Chinese, the European commissioners multiplied the prerequisites. The meetings were never warm, and the multilateral and bilateral efforts of the Chinese authorities did not yield results. Therefore China resolved to move forward with sixteen countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This diplomatic decision was actually fruitful.

Along with the CEE, China quickly formed the political format called "16+1". The sixteen first pro BRI countries are EU Member States such as Poland and Hungary, or candidate countries such as Serbia and Montenegro. For political reasons (loosening embrace of the European Union and Russia) and for economic reasons (attracting Chinese investments, rebalancing foreign trade), they wholeheartedly welcome the great Chinese project. This was done much to the discontent of the European Commission (EC). The EC used its political, legal and economic weapons to cool them down -for nothing good may come from the east! The EC tried to break the agreements between China and Hungary on the modernization of the Belgrade-Budapest railway line. The EC believed Chinese companies would never win the proper bids. The EC was wrong. For the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) has just won the competition of the 2.4 km Pelješac Bridge in Croatia (€280 million).

Following this stage of hostility, we have now reached the fourth and final stage of open  participation. History will record that it officially started in 2016. Just prior to this in 2015, the United Kingdom, opposed by the United States, joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) proposed by the Chinese government. In June 2016, the EC at last published "Elements for a new EU strategy on China", in which the institution stated that "EU should seize new openings to strengthen its relations with China". Threatened to be outplayed, the European Council as well as the European Commission finally maintained but softened their stiff stance on the four political pillars towards the BRI: reciprocity and creation of level-playing field in trade and investment, equal market access, promotion of jointly-agreed international standards, coordination of infrastructure investments and transportation services. The EU-China Connectivity Platform agreed by Brussels and Beijing took its first steps in 2016.

Countless Europeans are now earnestly working on the BRI.

Today Chinese projects are numerous in both railways and airports. In the ports, they are concentrated along the China-Europe maritime routes. Such as the €100 million project in Marseille Fos port with the Chinese Quechen Silicon Chemical. The visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Beijing in January 2018 hastened the outcome of the case.

Europeans rightly stress the importance of harmonization and complementarity between the BRI and the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T), the EU planned set of road, rail, air and water transport networks. 

From Lianyungang (Jiangsu province) to Rotterdam (Netherlands) via Kazakhstan, the northern set of routes is being progressively consolidated. BRI managers call it the 'New Eurasian Land Bridge'. It is connected to the North Sea-Baltic (NSB) Corridor within the TEN-T. The NSB Corridor unites by rail, road and inland waterways seven EU Member States: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium. 

Along these northern routes some twenty freight trains a week are already running. In 2040 the NSB Corridor railways could manage 3 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of containers each year, transported by 50 to 60 trains a day. Though these numbers are still small when compared to the future maritime traffic between Europe and the Far East: 16 million TEU in 2016, 40 million TEU expected in 2040.

 Of course, heavy are the risks for BRI:

•bad infrastructure projects only implemented because Chinese funding is available, 

•lack of clear BRI investment plan leading to local projects competing with one another, 

•unsuccessful international cooperation because of Chinese dominance in logistics chains, 

•opposition between EU and Chinese standards,

•degradation by Euro-Chinese trade of the competitive position of such and such EU Member State.

BRI and TEN-T demand courage and will. A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for! They also require love. For work is love made manifest.

(Hervé de Tréglodé is a senior transport expert based in Paris, France.)