【英文】马歇尔基金会报告：中国在欧洲投资基础设施的安全影响（51页）

英文研究报告 2021年10月12日 07:19 管理员

The Mediterranean became a crucial part of the BRI, being one of the few areas in which the Belt (the Silk Road Economic Belt) and Road (the Maritime Silk Road) connect. The expansion of the Suez Canal in 2016 made this space even more crucial for China. Chinese activism in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa increased substantially after 2016. China acquired a majority stake in Piraeus port that year, and between 2016 and 2019 several Mediterranean countries joined the BRI (see Table 1). However, in many of these countries, Chinese investments had been ongoing for a while. Southern European countries were relatively late in formalizing the already well-established trend of inbound Chinese investments by signing on the BRI. Greece and Portugal joined in 2018 and Italy in 2019, relatively late compared to other European countries.

China had already made acquisitions in several of these countries over the previous years, as a result of the privatization processes that the global financial crisis and the eurozone crisis triggered.6 Chinese Investments in Italy In March 2019, Italy and the China signed a broad and comprehensive MoU for the former to join the BRI. Italy was the first big European country and the first G7 member to formalize its participation in the BRI. The MoU contained no legally binding clause and its wording was mostly generic, pointing at a collaboration focused primarily on transport, logistics and infrastructure. The document showed a significant degree of confusion driving the approach of the Italian government at the time and the benefits were not as clear as the political costs.7 The immediate price that Italy paid was the growing scrutiny from other EU members and the United States of the direction and intentions of its foreign policy.