Spotlight: "Belt and Road" initiatives opportunity for China-EU cooperation

As China is strengthening industrial capacity cooperation worldwide, European experts thought that China's initiatives, including the "Belt and Road" initiatives, will bring opportunity for China-EU investment and industrial capacity cooperation.

Slawomir Majman, President of the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency, said recently that the Chinese "Belt and Road" initiatives meet the development goals of Polish government.

In the "2020 National Development Strategy" document, Poland designated its main development goals, including the construction of roads, railways,airports, and other, aimed at creating modern infrastructure and contributing to the country's sustainable development.

All of those goals would be closely related to the recent initiatives of China, therefore Polish diplomats, politicians and experts on China paid close attention to the recent strategic projects of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the "Belt and Road" program.

Majman said that in the view of these strategic policies, Poland hoped for more Chinese investments in the fields of food, telecommunications, machine building, energy, information technology and research.

The cooperation between Poland and China has been constantly growing in recent year. Nowadays, a direct railway connection between Lodz in Poland and Chengdu in China's Sichuan Province was already in use. Since 2012, the Chinese company Sinohydro had been carrying out the expansion of channels in Wroclaw, as a major part of the Odra river flood protection system.

Alice Ekman, a scholar with the French Institute of International relations, said that China now had reinforced confidence in its own economic weight and its own initiatives. The "Belt and Road" initiatives had been received positively by a number of different countries. Moreover, China had already had a lot of experience in building infrastructure at a fast pace and reasonable cost, development in Africa.

"As a new economic powerhouse, China brings a number of advantages to productivity, technology, funding, experience and development. It can then use this experience and create cooperative opportunities and market advantages for the region," said Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for EU Studies at Renmin University of China.

In Lithuania, the Baltic country's government and China Merchants Group signed three memoranda of understanding earlier in May aimed at further strengthening economic cooperation between the two countries.

According to China Merchants Group representatives, a logistic corridor between Asia and Europe, via Lithuania, should be created in the future.

"We have made clear that our future cooperation with the Lithuanian side will include investment and operation of seaport, cooperation on railways and logistics, and cooperation on cross-border free trade zone," the Chinese delegation told Xinhua.

According to Lithuania's economy ministry, Chinese aggregated foreign direct investments in Lithuania amounted to 2.18 million euros (2.39 million U.S. dollars) in 2014.

Taking Romania, which is an eastern European country, as an example, it also welcomes Chinese investment, as Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta told Xinhua that energy and high-speed railroads are essential projects.

Romania, he added, as any other EU country, aims to expand cooperation with China and welcomes Chinese investments in the Central and Eastern European region.

Romania's ambition to become energy independent to export part of its production requires huge investments.

According to industry estimations, there is a need to invest around 3-4 billion euros every year until 2030 to modernize and maintain existing power plants,transport and electric infrastructure, said Eric Stab, chief of GDF SUEZ operations in Romania.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently told Xinhua in an interview that the "Belt and Road" initiatives will bring more benefits for European nations that are hungering for investment.

The "Belt and Road" initiatives covers countries and regions with a total population of 4.4 billion and a total economic volume of 21 trillion U.S. dollars, 63 percent and 29 percent respectively of the world's total. Endit