Western Europe in the BRI

This chapter studies how Western European countries interact with China in the framework of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI was first proposed by Chinese leadership in late 2013 and then promoted to Europe in 2015. Western European countries were very interested in the business opportunities brought by the BRI, but later on became more suspicious about Chinese approaches and principles. In this chapter, I will first examine the EU’s evolving attitude towards the BRI and then how Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux countries, as well as the UK, perceive the BRI and the projects they explored with China in the past five years. My conclusion is that cooperation and competition will coexist between these countries and China.