Yahoo – AFP, Jacques KLOPP, January 7, 2018
Paris (AFP) - Depending on who you ask in Europe, China's colossal East-West infrastructure programme is either an opportunity or a threat -- and when French President Emmanuel Macron visits next week, Beijing will be watching to see how keen he is to jump on board.
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| Is the New Silk Road simply a path to prosperity or a Chinese power grab in disguise? (AFP Photo/NIKLAS HALLE'N) |
Paris (AFP) - Depending on who you ask in Europe, China's colossal East-West infrastructure programme is either an opportunity or a threat -- and when French President Emmanuel Macron visits next week, Beijing will be watching to see how keen he is to jump on board.
Since China
launched the New Silk Road plan in 2013, the hugely ambitious initiative to
connect Asia and Europe by road, rail and sea has elicited both enormous
interest and considerable anxiety.
"It's
the most important issue in international relations for the years to come, and
will be the most important point during Emmanuel Macron's visit," said
Barthelemy Courmont, a China expert at French think-tank Iris.
The $1
trillion project is billed as a modern revival of the ancient Silk Road that
once carried fabric, spices, and a wealth of other goods in both directions.
Known in
China as "One Belt One Road", the plans would see gleaming new road
and rail networks built through Central Asia and beyond, and new maritime
routes stretching through the Indian Ocean and Red Sea.
Beijing
would develop roads, ports and rail lines through 65 countries representing an
estimate 60 percent of the world's population and a third of its economic
output.
Macron, who heads to China for a three-day state visit on Sunday, will notably be accompanied by some 50 company chiefs keen to do business with the Asian powerhouse.
 |
Like
traders on the old silk road, modern Chinese companies expect to profit
handsomely from the $1-trillion revival of the route (AFP Photo/STR)
|
Macron, who heads to China for a three-day state visit on Sunday, will notably be accompanied by some 50 company chiefs keen to do business with the Asian powerhouse.
So far
France has been cautious on the Silk Road plan, but Courmont said Chinese
leaders were "waiting for a clear position" from Macron at a time
when they view the young leader as an "engine" for growth in Europe.
"If
Macron takes a decision on how to tackle the Chinese initiative, all of Europe
will follow," Courmont predicted.
But, as
Courmont acknowledges, Europe is divided on what to make of China's ambitions.
The
continent could potentially benefit handsomely from increased trade over the
coming decades, but in some corners there is suspicion that it masks an
attempted Beijing influence grab.
"They
are notably asking themselves about the geopolitical consequences of this
project in the long-term," Alice Ekman, who covers China at the French
Institute of International Relations, said of France and Germany.
Win-win?
In Central
and Eastern Europe the programme has been met with altogether more enthusiasm,
given the huge infrastructure investment that China could bring to the poorer
end of the continent.
"Some
consider the awakening of China and Asia as a threat," Hungary's Prime
Minister Viktor Orban told a summit in Budapest in November which gathered
China with 16 Central and Eastern European countries.
 |
Beijing
plans to develop roads, ports and rail lines through 65 countries representing
an estimate 60 percent of the world's population (AFP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
|
"For
us, it's a huge opportunity," he said, with Beijing using the summit to
announce three billion euros of investment in projects including a
Belgrade-Budapest railway line.
Bogdan
Goralczyk, director of the Centre for Europe at the University of Warsaw, noted
there were divisions even within eastern Europe, with Poland hesitant due to
its right-wing government's "strong anti-communist stance".
Others to
the west have made little effort to hide their concern.
Former
Danish premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen fretted in a column for Germany's Zeit
newspaper that "Europe will wake up only when it's too late, and when
swathes of central and eastern Europe's infrastructure are dependent on
China."
The former
NATO chief noted that Greece -- a major recipient of Chinese largesse -- had in
June blocked an EU declaration condemning Chinese rights abuses.
It came
just months after Athens' Piraeus port, one of the biggest in the world, passed
under Chinese control.
Germany,
Europe's biggest economy, is favourable to Chinese investment, but has
reservations.
"If we
do not develop a strategy in the face of China, it will succeed in dividing
Europe," Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned in August.
France is
meanwhile seeking to "rebalance" relations with China during Macron's
trip, according to his office -- eyeing a trade deficit of 30 billion euros,
its biggest with any partner.
"Our
Chinese partners would prefer a win-win situation. Why not? On the condition
that it's not the same party that wins twice," French Foreign Minister
Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday.
"It is
not France's intention to block China," he said.
"But
we should establish a partnership based on reciprocity when it comes to the
opening of markets."
burs-jk/kjl/jh/kaf
China's "One Belt One Road" project is costing $1 trillion and has been billed as a modern revival of the ancient Silk Road --— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 7, 2018
that once carried fabric, spices, and a wealth of other goods in both directions https://t.co/nhVVYnFWqH pic.twitter.com/UGuZUkxMsw
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