Europe on board with Xi's Belt and Road plan

Massive benefits of transcontinental project are now becoming widely recognized

Three years after President Xi Jinping proposed his Belt and Road Initiative, leading Europeans have come to realize the win-win benefits of the plan, designed to bring the Eurasian continent closer.

Men Jing, the Belgium-based College of Europe's professor of EU-China relations, drew this conclusion after completing interviews that examined how the mega-proposal could impact relations between China and the European Union.

"Their responses are in general positive and they have recognized the significance of President Xi's proposal," says Men in her campus office in the picturesque medieval town of Bruges.

She says the survey results came after her team, consisting of three colleagues, intensively interviewed about 40 businesspeople, think tank experts and European officials, starting in June.

As well as holding face-to-face talks, they also sent questionnaires, extracting results from the top-ranking 20 think tanks in Europe, which have already published papers on China's proposal to construct a Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

Xi put forward the two ideas when he was visiting Central Asia and Southeast Asia in September and October of 2013 and, essentially, the "belt" includes countries situated on the original Silk Road through Central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

But Beijing says it hasn't defined boundaries and all the countries that have shown an interest can consult with each other.

Men says many Europeans already know about the proposal, on which China and the United Nations have signed a joint memorandum.

"When I talk with them, nobody believes this is a project of strategic threat, but they all trust this will be a mutually beneficial big idea," Men says in response to claims that the China-led proposal may be a threat to the rest of the world.

After three years of work, and China's tremendous efforts to make part of the proposal a reality, Men concludes, "Such misunderstanding has gone."

On April 1, 2014, nearly six months after Xi proposed the Belt and Road Initiative, he visited the College of Europe on the final leg of his first West European tour as Chinese president.

That day, Xi endorsed the setting up of the college's EU-China Research Center, which mainly trains personnel for EU institutions. He said the two sides needed to forge a partnership of peace, growth, reform and civilization.

Men joined the college and took responsibility as the EU-China chair professor in 2008.

As director of the research center, Men says for the next stage the focus should be on benefiting from the opportunities the Belt and Road Initiative has brought.

In the past three years, China has signed agreements with up to 30 countries to link with their national programs, and some of them, such as Poland, the Czech Republic, and Greece, are in Europe.

In June 2015, China and the European Union signed an agreement on synergy with the Belt and Road Initiative and Europe's $350 billion investment plan, which will be expanded in time and scale after three years of operation.

Both sides have reached consensus on exploring the synergies of megaprojects to boost trade and investment flow, and China is the first country outside the EU to join the investment plan.

But they have not reached common ground at a technical level.

"Reportedly, the European Union side welcomes Chinese investment in the scheme, but is not willing to grant it a voice on the board, which Beijing will not agree with," says Men.

"So uncertainties still exist when going into detailed talks."

Men also says south, east and central Europeans are more interested in the project than their peers in the west, who maintain the Belt and Road routes do not cover the western part of Europe.

In fact, Xi took the concept from the ancient Silk Road, which extended to Italy centuries ago.

"Brussels is truly different from Athens," Men says, who felt "joyful" when talking about her interview experience in Piraeus Port, where China COSCO Shipping Corp has established a major presence. It rented its container terminals several years ago and acquired a 67 percent stake in the Piraeus Port Authority this year.

"Nobody in the port authority left when COSCO stepped in and I found hardly any Chinese in the building when I was interviewing there," Men says. "The Greek people I approached were happy about the job-saving deal and they are convinced by the credentials of COSCO in Piraeus."

Up to 1,000 Greeks are working in the container terminals, having kept their jobs even in the depths of the sovereign debt crisis, says Men.

"And the Greeks are expecting, with help from COSCO, to revive their ship-repairing industry, which has shifted to other parts of the world."

But what is even more ambitious is a plan to link maritime transport with railways, which will help make Piraeus Port become one of the largest container transfer ports in the Mediterranean and also make it a gateway to Central and Eastern Europe.

"This is more challenging, and will require deep coordination among different European countries," says Men.

She says her field trip to Greece has helped her better understand the tangible benefits China's proposal has brought. "First of all, it is about jobs, which Europeans badly need."

As a professor of EU-China relations, Men says she has experienced a learning curve after Xi's proposal. From 2014, she has been invited to speak at seminars on the topic in China and Europe.

She started organizing seminars to explore the views of both sides and how the concept should be further deepened.

Focusing most of her research energy on the topic in recent years, she says the academic activities have helped Europeans better understand the proposal.

Mao Xinya, director of the Belt and Road Initiative Research Centre at the China Executive Leadership Academy in Shanghai, went to the College of Europe to work as a visiting scholar early this year, and they initiated the research project on what impact Xi's proposal has had on China-EU relations.

As well as interviews and surveys, their team has also done research on what role Turkey can play in implementing the synergy of China and the EU's megaprojects.

Now, they are busy preparing a seminar on the outcome of their research, which will be held on Oct 20 in the European Parliament. It will be hosted by Jo Leinen, president of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with China.

As the Belt and Road Initiative has become a platform for China to deepen relations with the rest of the world, Men says her research center will focus hard on those areas.

"The proposal and its impact on Sino-EU relations will be our research priority for the years to come," says Men. "We hope we can do research in a more innovative way in the future and bring more outcomes and perspectives."

Yao Yueyang contributed to this story.

fujing@chinadaily.com.cn