[The thickening ranks of China’s economic allies have left European officials increasingly wary. Last month, Italy formally signed on to China’s vast ‘‘One Belt, One Road’’ project, new Silk Road into Europe. On Friday, the summit meeting was capped by Greece’s announcement that it had joined, too.]
By Marc
Santora
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Premier Li Keqiang of China, left, at a ceremony with Prime
Minister Andrej
Plenkovic of Croatia on Friday. Credit EPA, via Shutterstock
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BRIJESTA,
Croatia — China’s premier surveyed
construction of a long-sought bridge over Croatia’s Mali Ston Bay, home to
China’s largest infrastructure project in Europe — built by a Chinese company
with Chinese workers, and financed in large part by European Union money.
A driving rain lashed the hills while the premier, Li Keqiang,
was there on Thursday. But, Mr. Li declared, “This bridge will be a rainbow on
earth.”
The reassuring language was part of a broader effort to convince
increasingly skeptical European nations that China comes in peace.
Fresh from a summit meeting with European Union leaders this
week, Mr. Li, who as premier is China’s second-highest official after President
Xi Jinping, arrived in Croatia for the annual meeting of an economic bloc that
China has forged with 16 Central and Eastern European nations.
The thickening ranks of China’s economic allies have left
European officials increasingly wary. Last month, Italy formally signed on to
China’s vast ‘‘One Belt, One Road’’ project, new Silk Road into Europe. On
Friday, the summit meeting was capped by Greece’s announcement that it had
joined, too.
That does not mean that all is roses even between China and its
newly forged economic allies in the group. But by aggressively courting the
nations on Europe’s eastern and southern flank, Western officials worry that
China is stoking division within the European Union.
Mr. Li has tried all week to allay those concerns, promising
progress on fair-trade issues with Europe, even as he pursues deeper
cooperation.
“This is not Game of Thrones,” Mr. Li said upon arriving in
Croatia this week, referring to the HBO hit series, which was filmed in part in
Dubrovnik, where the summit meeting was held. “This is a reflection of win-win
cooperation.”
The 16 plus 1 Group was formed after Premier Wen Jiabao’s
historic visit to Poland in 2012. At the time, many countries in the region
felt left out of Brussels’ negotiations with China. The grouping was framed by
Beijing as an opportunity to give them a greater voice.
Skeptics immediately suspected that China had other intentions,
but the economic benefits of trade with China have been hard to resist. That
has been so even for Germany and France, which have not formally signed on to
Belt and Road, let alone Italy or Greece, which are desperate for investment.
China has already moved ahead with plans to make the Greek port
of Piraeus the “dragon head” of its infrastructure push, and it has stepped up
investment in Greece, which is still smarting from the austerity measures
imposed by its European partners.
“I think that the fact that today we became 17 plus one is the
good news of the day,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras said on Friday. “I
look forward to working with all of you in the framework of this initiative in full
respect of the rules and procedures of the European Union.”
China’s presence is no longer a novelty in this part of Europe,
where its track record is decidedly more complicated than it was when the
economic bloc was formed.
For instance, after years of investments failing to materialize,
Poland, the largest nation in the group and once one of its biggest champions,
has cooled on China. The arrest in Poland of a Chinese regional director of the
tech giant Huawei underscored the changing nature of the relationship.
Similarly, the Czech Republic, led by the avowed Sinophile
President Milos Zeman, has traditionally been among Europe’s most solicitous
nations. But calls by its cybersecurity agency to limit the use of Huawei as
well as the tech giant ZTE in critical infrastructure have infuriated Beijing.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared his China
friendly ‘‘Opening to the East’’ policy in 2010, and has sought to use the
prospect of a flood of money from China as leverage in his ongoing battles with
Brussels over his government’s authoritarian drift. Yet there have been no
major new Chinese investments for the past seven years.
A high-profile plan for China to build a railroad from Belgrade
to Budapest remains hopelessly stalled.
In fact, the pace of Chinese investment in Europe has slowed for
the past two years, according to the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies. In
2018, there was more than $19 billion in direct Chinese investment in Europe, a
decline of 40 percent from 2017, and over 50 percent from the 2016 peak of
around $42 billion.
And this was before the European Commission published its
“EU-China, a Strategic Outlook” in March, labeling China a “systemic rival” and
a “strategic competitor.”
“Instead of engaging endlessly with China and pleading for it to
change its ways,” said François Godement, a senior adviser for Asia at the
Institut Montaigne in Paris, “the Commission suggests that Europe should change
track and adopt a set of robust defensive policies, some of which will have an
effect whatever China’s response may be.”
Mr. Li used the summit meeting to push back against those who
accuse China of not playing by the same set of rules as other nations,
demanding that Europe respect Beijing’s “One China” policy as it relates to
Taiwan, while China does not respect the idea of “One Europe.”
“China will continue to firmly support the European integration
process,” Mr. Li promised on Friday. “We will take a fair and nondiscriminatory
approach to treat each others’ companies with openness and transparency."
Philippe Le Corre, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy
School, said new stringent screening measures for Chinese investment within the
E.U. were a significant development that could test how much the rhetoric
matches the reality.
Already, he said, it was clear that China was fairing much
better in the five Balkan nations that are not a part of the E.U.
“This is why it is critical that Brussels continues to work to
bring these countries into the fold,” he said.
The choice of Croatia to host the summit meeting, he said, was
significant because as the newest member of the European Union, joining in
2013, it has forged one of the strongest partnerships with China, best seen in
the bridge project.
Construction of a bridge over the Mali Ston Bay, linking the
southern Peljesac peninsula with the rest of the country, had been stalled for
decades.
In June 2017, the European Union announced an allocation of 357
million euros, or $413 million — about 85 percent of the bridge’s cost.
The next year, a state-owned Chinese construction firm, the
China Road and Bridge Corporation, undercut its nearest competitor by some $100
million to secure the bid. Construction began last summer and it is expected to
be completed in 2021.
Mr. Li, who arrived to a band of traditional Croatian singers
and a phalanx of Chinese workers in CBRC rain slickers lining the road, said
the bridge was evidence that China could work in partnership and harmony.
“The bridge is a pilot project not only for 16 plus 1 initiative
cooperation, but also for our cooperation with the E.U.,” he said.
Joseph Orovic contributed reporting.
