Hungary has become the first European country to sign a memorandum of understanding with China on promoting the Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road, China media report. The MoU was signed on Sunday, during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi\u2019s visit to Budapest, where he met with Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In a statement on the occasion, Wang said he hopes more European countries will join in.<\/p>\n
Hungary may be the first country in Europe to officially sign an MoU relating to China\u2019s \u201cOne Belt, One Road\u201d strategy, but the subject has cropped up repeatedly during Chinese interactions with Europe. When Xi Jinping toured Europe in April 2014, with stops in The Netherlands, France, Germany, and Belgium, he urged the EU and China to work together to combine EU policies with China\u2019s Belt and Road. When Li Keqiang attended the China-Central and Eastern European (CEE) Leaders\u2019 Meeting in Serbia in December 2014, he also highlighted the role Europe has to play in the Belt and Road \u2013 and the role China can play in completing infrastructure and energy projects in Central and Eastern Europe under the aegis of that initiative.<\/p>\n
More recently, during Xi\u2019s visits to Russia and Belarus this May, both countries agreed to work with China on the Silk Road Economic Belt. Belarus agreed to the project hoping to win Chinese infrastructure investments, while Russia promised to link its new Eurasia Economic Union with China\u2019s Belt and Road.<\/p>\n
While the Belt and Road are often discussed primarily in the context of China\u2019s near neighbors \u2013 particularly Southeast and Central Asia \u2013 Beijing has long been clear about the importance of Europe, particularly Central and Eastern Europe, to the project. A few months after Xi Jinping first unveiled the twin Belt and Road concepts in speeches in Kazakhstan (September 2013) and Indonesia (October 2013), Li extended the Belt and Road all the way to Europe during a November 2013 visit to Romania.<\/p>\n
Likewise, the official action plan for the Belt and Road, issues by Chinese government agencies in March 2015, described the Silk Road as \u201ca new Eurasian Land Bridge\u201d that \u201cfocuses on bringing together China, Central Asia, Russia, and Europe.\u201d That means the Belt and Road, by China\u2019s own definition, will be incomplete without buy-in from European countries. And Central and Eastern European countries in particular have a special role to play. As Xinhua put it on Monday, \u201cCEE nations will be essential links in the Belt and Road Initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n
European countries, like many of the Asian supporters of the Belt and Road, are primarily focused on the economics. \u201cChinese firms have invested more than 5 billion U.S. dollars in CEE countries in sectors such as energy, infrastructure and machinery,\u201d Xinhua reports. In coming years, China will build a high-speed railway connecting Hungary and Serbia and construct two nuclear reactors at a Romanian nuclear power plant. According to U.S. law firm Baker and McKenzie, Chinese investment in Europe doubled from 2013 to 2014, reaching $18 billion.<\/p>\n
In other words, the Silk Road in Europe was alive and well before Hungary signed the MoU \u2013 and it will only continue to grow as more government agreements officially tie existing investments and initiatives to China\u2019s Belt and Road strategy.<\/p>\n
Source: The Diplomat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hungary has become the first European country to sign a memorandum of understanding with China on promoting the Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road, China media report. The MoU was signed on Sunday, during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi\u2019s visit to Budapest, where he met with Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In a statement … Continue reading “Hungary joins Silk Road”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[144,70,12253,191,11208,10510],"class_list":["post-19772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-hungary","tag-silk-road","tag-viktor-orban"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19773,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19772\/revisions\/19773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}