EU Scrambles to Forge Unified Stance on China’s ‘New Silk Road’ After Italy Signs Up By James Carstensen for CNS News
GNN Note – The Belt and Road Initiative, headed by China, has evolved through a number of names. The first, back in 2013 was the “New Silk Road”. Then came One Belt One Road and then the latest, but perhaps not the last, is the The Belt and Road Initiative. Having someone refer to the New Silk Road in 2019 shows just how out of touch these satanic globalist in west have become. That is a 6 year old name that has now transitioned twice since that name was last used.
This is a big deal as the size of scope of the BRI is 11x the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe and Japan. The BRI has already built out more infrastructure than the entire Marshall Plan and the project is just beginning to gets it’s legs.
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Berlin (CNSNews.com) – Meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in France, European Union leaders hinted at the possibility of joining Beijing’s “new silk road” initiative, but only after concerns over equal trade are addressed.
Tuesday’s meeting came days after Italy signed its own memorandum with China intending to join the so-called “Belt-and-Road” initiative (BRI).
Known by the Chinese as “One Belt, One Road,” the initiative is a massive infrastructure program which China says is designed to promote global trade and growth – but has triggered alarm bells in some Western countries.
Xi met with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and E.U. Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker for “high level” talks on multilateral trade and the BRI.
Macron said that, despite “divergences” between the regions, the E.U. stands to gain more through actively cooperating in the BRI than resisting it.
“Cooperation brings more than confrontation,” he said. “We have more to win through openness than through closing doors.”
Xi said that China and the E.U. should be “working side by side and helping each other,” rather than being “worried about watching our back with suspicion while moving forward.”
The leaders agreed on the need for more transparent trade mechanisms, such as reforming the World Trade Organization to more efficiently tackle questions of transparency, state subsidies and dispute settlement.
The BRI envisages a land and sea infrastructure network linking China with more than 60 countries, in Southeast and Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, reminiscent of the ancient “Silk Road” trade route.
Merkel said the E.U. wants to “play an active part” in the initiative, but added that it would only do so if it leads to increased trade reciprocity from China.
The E.U. is China’s largest trading partner, and China is the E.U.’s second-largest. Combined, trade between the two amounts to more than €1 billion ($1.28 billion) per day.
‘Partner’ and ‘systemic rival’
The E.U. has been critical of both China and the BRI of late, voicing concern about unfettered Chinese investment in European companies leading to dependence, while European countries often faced investment restrictions in China.
