Belt and Road Summit: "European help yes – European standards no"
With billions for roads, ports and rail lines, China wants to link Asia, Europe and Africa. The views of Europeans are welcome – but not their interference.
This is set to become perhaps the largest infrastructure project in Chinese history: new trade routes running the length and breadth of the country. The views of Europeans are welcome – but not their interference. Handelsblatt correspondent Stephan Scheuer reports from the Belt and Road Summit in Beijing.
Background
The first Belt and Road Summit in Beijing in May 2017 marked the official high point of China’s New Silk Road – the initiative for infrastructure investment along historical trade routes that Xi Jinping had launched in 2013. More than 1,500 delegates from over 130 countries attended, including 29 heads of state and government. Most EU member states sent only ministers; the German Chancellor was not present.
Europe’s reaction was ambivalent from the outset: economic interest in the projects, but unease at Chinese standards on environmental protection, labour law, procurement and transparency. The question raised by this report – “European help yes, European standards no?” – remains unresolved to this day.
The Belt and Road Initiative grew rapidly thereafter. By 2025 more than 140 countries have signed cooperation memoranda with China. The financial scale is considerable – estimates range from 500 billion to over one trillion dollars in loans and investments granted, mainly through Chinese state banks such as the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank.
The focus has shifted several times. Initially large projects dominated – ports, railways and power plants in Central Asia, Africa and South-East Asia. Smaller projects have come to the fore more recently; Beijing itself speaks of a “small and beautiful” Silk Road. One reason is the debt problems of several recipient countries – from Sri Lanka (Hambantota port) to Zambia – which have damaged the initiative’s reputation.
Italy was in 2019 the first G7 country to join formally. In 2023 Italy was also the first to withdraw, citing economic results below expectations, lower than anticipated export growth to China and political costs vis-à-vis the United States and the EU that outweighed the benefits.
The European Union in 2021 announced its own initiative, Global Gateway, with a financial volume of 300 billion euros by 2027. The programme bundles existing EU development programmes and attempts to present them as a European alternative to the New Silk Road. The impact has so far been modest; the complexity of European procedures and the lesser coherence of the EU’s external face make it hard to keep pace with China’s dedicated programme.