EU plans infrastructure partnership with China

Brussels, Beijing There were only a few sentences in the speech by EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen on the situation in Europe, but they made the world sit up and take notice. Von der Leyen announced a European alternative to the controversial Chinese Silk Road initiative. “We want to create connections, not dependencies,” she said.

All over the world, China is building ports and roads, laying train lines and data cables. Europe’s initial openness has now given way to deep concern. Because with the infrastructure projects of the Chinese, also known as “Belt and Road”, corruption and a growing influence of the Communist Party (CP) are spreading.

Von der Leyen now wants to counter this, Europe’s answer to “Belt and Road” is called “Global Gateway”. The EU is thus initiating a change in foreign policy strategy that member states, industrial associations and allies have long been waiting for. The USA in particular is campaigning for the democratic world to move closer together in order to cope with the challenge posed by authoritarian China.

The Americans are likely to be all the more irritated that the Commission wants to deepen an infrastructure partnership with China in parallel with Global Gateway. After research by the Handelsblatt, the final preparations are underway in the commission for a feasibility study to identify routes for new rail connections between the People’s Republic and the EU.

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The political explosiveness can hardly be overestimated: The first project that the Europeans are promoting after the announcement of Global Gateway is, of all things, a cooperation with the Chinese.

Feasibility study costs millions

Internal documents show that the EU is allowing the feasibility study to cost one million euros, and the same amount is expected to flow from the Chinese side. The project is suspended by the influential State Commission for Development and Reform (NDRC). The European Bank for Reconstruction (EBRD) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is under Chinese leadership, are to take over the implementation.

“Both the EU and China are committed to a comprehensive strategic partnership,” said one of the papers. “Synergies between China’s BRI and the trans-European transport networks” of the EU are also highlighted. BRI stands for “Belt and Road Initiative”.

Synergies with the geopolitical vision of China’s head of state Xi Jinping? The rail project “will make Washington, Tokyo, Delhi and other capitals sit up and take notice,” says Noah Barkin, an expert on China-Europe relations at the German Marshall Fund. “While the EU is promoting a new geostrategic approach to infrastructure policy, it is jointly financing an extensive study with China on new rail lines that seem to be tailor-made for Beijing and its ‘Belt and Road’ ambitions.” German business circles say that The project is “in need of explanation”.

There are also considerable concerns within the EU Commission. Because the route would cross Central Asia – and thus countries that are in the strategic interests of the Chinese. The exact course has not yet been finally decided, but a key issues paper drawn up for official use already shows a route: “Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and India are expected”, can be read there.

Globalization according to the authoritarian ideas of the CP

This makes it even more explosive: Why should the EU help China expand its influence in these countries? Especially since there are already several routes on which freight is transported by train between China and Europe.

With the Silk Road, China is shaping globalization according to the authoritarian ideas of the Communist Party. Instead of putting projects out to tender fairly, it awards large orders to its own companies and overloads countries with debts that create dependencies. “Sinocentric structures that are not in our interest,” recognizes the Foreign Office.

It is true that the funds have declined in recent years – also because of criticism from within China. According to a recent study by the US analysis institute Aiddata, 42 countries with low to middle income have accumulated debts to China amounting to more than ten percent of their gross domestic product.

The commission takes time with an opinion: “The main aim of the study is not to support a certain country with the development of the infrastructure”, writes a spokesman then. Rather, it is in the European interest to guarantee the “interoperability” and “sustainability” of the transport networks.

China is the EU’s largest importer and its second most important export market. Goods worth a billion euros are exchanged every day. Container ships dominate trade, but trains are becoming increasingly attractive. In 2020, the freight volume by rail will increase by 50 percent despite the pandemic. So it can make economic sense to explore new routes. But it also made economic sense for the EU to agree on an investment agreement with China shortly before US President Joe Biden took office. Politically it was a disaster.

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For the Chinese, the cooperative attitude of the Europeans comes in very handy. Joint projects between China and Europe, including feasibility studies, serve the Chinese leadership as evidence that China is capable of forging international partnerships. The stronger the tensions with Washington, the more Beijing emphasizes its ties to Brussels. The regime wants to prevent Europe from allying itself with the US against China.

The European-Chinese infrastructure project is not being promoted by the head of the Commission, but by Directorate-General Move, the EU’s Ministry of Transport, so to speak. The fact that the civil servants have a life of their own has made it difficult for the Commission to respond to the challenge from China for years.

USA is annoyed by contradicting signals

As early as 2018, during the term of office of the former Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, the authority resolved to think through infrastructure policy geostrategically. At that time, the EU invented the cumbersome term “connectivity”, which has now been replaced by “global gateway”. But what is still missing is a strategy, not to mention specific projects.

The Directorate-General Move wants to avoid steps that could provoke China. The same applies to the General Directorate for International Partnerships, the guardian of the multi-billion dollar pots of money that are eligible for infrastructure aid. The officials write internally of “win-win” solutions with Beijing, not of systemic rivalry with a power-conscious dictatorship. “Win-win” is a catchphrase that the Chinese government also likes to use. In the end, most of the “profits” end up with China, as critics emphasize.

EU Commission President

Ursula von der Leyen: “We want to create connections, not dependencies.”

(Photo: AP)

At management level in the EU, thinking is now very different. Von der Leyen made no secret of the fact that Global Gateway is directed against the expansion of the Chinese sphere of power. It makes no sense for Europe to lay a road “between a Chinese-owned copper mine and a port that is also Chinese-owned,” she said in her address on the European situation. Representatives of the member states become even clearer. “The EU is preparing to push back China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative,” announced a Brussels diplomat in the summer.

Such pleasant formulations are no longer enough for the Americans. You are annoyed by the contradicting signals from the EU in China policy. The Asia strategists in the White House are therefore relying on new allies, India, Australia and Japan – regional powers that feel the threat from China, which is increasingly invasive in foreign policy, much more acutely than the Europeans. The Aukus Pact, which the Americans recently launched with the Australians and the British and which cost France a lucrative submarine deal, is an expression of this reorientation.

A common China agenda is a long way off

There was great outrage in Europe that the US was secretly forging an alliance that would change the security architecture in Asia. US President Biden is continuing the America-first policy of his predecessor Donald Trump, angry European diplomats. The deepened infrastructure partnership with China shows, however, that the Europeans act similarly without consultation in case of doubt.

The hope that the EU and the US will succeed under Biden in formulating a common China agenda does not seem to be fulfilled. “We’re not forging anything big in common with the Americans at the moment,” says Mikko Huotari, director of the Berlin China think tank Merics, which is precisely due to the “indecision of European China policy”: “We want more distance, less dependencies, but at the same time we want one Avoid cutting the cord or even a confrontation. ”

Announce Global Gateway on the one hand, and deepen an infrastructure partnership with Beijing on the other: This back and forth is symptomatic of Europe’s strategic fickleness.

More: Internal strategy paper: G7 countries want to counter China’s Silk Road initiative

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