The ambivalent European approach towards China continues apace: On the one hand, the EU countries are further embracing China. For instance, the Chinese state-owned firm, COSCO, received a 35 percent stake in a container terminal in Hamburg, Germany. The Greek parliament recently gave an extra stake to COSCO in the port of Piraeus. Chinese trade with large southern European economies, like Italy and Portugal, have readily surpassed 2018/2019 levels.
On the other hand, the EU is trying to put its act together and have a comprehensive counter-BRI investment strategy, with its latest label being the Global Gateway (GG), announced by European Commission on Sept 15. The EU wants to turn GG into ‘a trusted brand’ and to create ‘links not dependencies’ especially in Africa, a barely veiled attack on the integrity of the BRI.
However, a counter-BRI strategy is far from enough to deal with global realities; global challenges such as climate change and development in the Global South cannot be tackled by China or the EU or the Global South alone, nor for that matter by the American militarized approach (e.g., AUKUS) towards the rise of China. Evidence for this gray area complexity is the very ambivalence and mixed feelings at the heart of European approach to China.
M. Forough
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