Not to mention that increased Chinese investment in Central and Eastern Europe makes up for the inevitable shortfalls in an EU on the brink of recession. Still, trade volume between the now 17+1 is roughly 10 times smaller than between top trading partners China and the EU. As China directly invested roughly 9 billion euros in what was the 16+1 up to last year, the total investment in the EU for the past 10 years reached 280 billion euros.
BRI's Arabian nightsIn the Southwest Asia front, the story focuses on the 2nd China-Arab Forum on Reform and Development, held in Shanghai earlier this week.
Beijing clinched a proverbial showering of BRI deals with 17 Arab nations, including Egypt, Lebanon and Oman. Not by accident, the forum this year was called Build the Belt and Road, Share Development and Prosperity. Up to 2018, 21 Arab nations had signed BRI memoranda of understanding.
These nations are not only BRI partners, but 12 of them also went for strategic partnerships with China. And they will be heading to Beijing next week for the BRI forum.
The assistant secretary-general of the Arab League, Khalil Thawadi, notes that China is the second-largest trading partner for the Arab world, with a US$190 billion turnover, according to the latest 2017 data.
Qatar is a very interesting case. According to Persian Gulf traders, Doha may export as much as 40% of China's natural gas. Qatar imports from China, departing from Shanghai and Guangzhou, are bound to increase, and that's all Maritime Silk Road territory.
On the BRI, Qatar has signed a memorandum of understanding as early as 2014 and was a founding member of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). It also established a currency exchange center for the yuan, serving not only the Middle East as a whole but also parts of Northern Africa.
Russian analyst Dmitry Orlov has likened the current geopolitical-geoeconomic situation in Europe to a matryoshka.
The US is the cracked outer shell. Inside, there's NATO, a de facto occupying force right up to the Russian border, and inside NATO there's the EU "a political talking shop plus a sprawling bureaucracy that spews forth reams upon reams of rules and regulations."
I have been closely following the EU and NATO since the 1990s. In my renewed conversations with Brussels diplomats, three factors are now recurrent. 1) France and Germany are seriously debating forming a European army to get rid of NATO; 2) Everyone is fed up with the unilateralism of the Trump administration; 3) Might as well find a "win-win" way to do increased business with China.
Have connectivity, will travel. Next stop, BRI in Beijing.
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