European Perspectives on China’s New Silk Road

International Workshop

On 14-15 September 2015, the EU-China Research Centre and the InBev-Baillet Latour Chair of EU-China Relations at the College of Europe, organized an international workshop on “European Perspectives on China’s New Silk Road”. The workshop was hosted by the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels. 

In late 2013, Chinese President XI Jinping announced China’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) development strategy to be pursued in the next three decades. Since then, this new strategy has been promoted by the Chinese government both externally and internally. Most recently, at the 17^th EU-China summit meeting on 29 June 2015, officials from both sides addressed the importance to identify synergies between the Juncker Plan and the “One Belt and One Road” (OBOR) initiative.

Against this background, EU policymakers, as well as researchers from think tanks and academia, discussed the China’s New Silk Road strategy in six panels. The panels tackled different dimensions of China’s New Silk Road to generate European perspectives:

• Panel One: The New Silk Road – a domestic or an international Chinese project?
• Panel Two: One Road One Belt: China connects Asia and Europe – the Central Asian land bridge and the Indian Ocean waterfront.
• Panel Three: The security and political challenge for China's New Silk Road strategy.
• Panel Four: The AIIB and the Silk Road Fund.
• Panel Five: The impact on EU-China economic and trade relations.
• Panel Six: The perspectives of the member states.  

Mr Luis PLANAS PUCHADES, Secretary-General of the European Economic and Social Committee, and Mr Jo LEINEN, Chairman of the China Delegation, European Parliament, acted as keynote speakers. Moreover, Minister ZHANG Lirong, Chinese Mission to the EU, gave a briefing on China’s New Silk Road.

For questions about the conference, please contact us via the e-mail address EU-China-Conferences [at] coleurope.eu.

Please find the programme here.