Li talks of hub to funnel exports into Europe
Print Edition
PREMIER LI Keqiang met 16 central and eastern European leaders yesterday in a summit to cement China’s plans for a new transport network to funnel exports into Europe.
The two-day meeting in Belgrade gathered prime ministers from 16 central and eastern European countries, with infrastructure and transport top of the agenda.
Beijing hopes to turn the Greek port of Piraeus — where Chinese shipping giant COSCO has a 35-year concession to hugely expand its two container terminals — into a new hub for trade with Europe.
Despite being hit hard by the economic crisis, Greece still has the world’s largest merchant marine fleet, with China one of its key customers.
Li discussed investment in Greece’s railways on a visit to Athens in August, including a high-speed rail project.
“We will propose construction of a rapid land and maritime route based on the Budapest-Belgrade railroad and the Greek port of Piraeus to improve regional connectivity,” Li told Serbian media ahead of the summit in Belgrade.
The signing of a deal for a high-speed bullet train link between Budapest and Belgrade, to be built by 2017, with Li’s Hungarian and Serbian counterparts, Viktor Orban and Aleksandar Vucic, is the centerpiece of the gathering.
“We will set a mid-term agenda to define our future cooperation and present financial measures that will facilitate it,” Li said ahead of the summit, the third of its kind.
Beijing said it was keen to invest in energy, agriculture, industry and infrastructure projects in the 16 countries.
Trade between China and the region, up five-fold since 2003, was also on the agenda.
Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said trade with the region could exceed US$60 billion this year, up US$4.9 billion from last year.
China has invested billions of euros in Hungary and Serbia, but much less in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic states.
However, some countries including Poland hope to lift exports to China, particularly food, after Russia slapped a ban on food imports in retaliation for European Union sanctions.
“We hope to sell a lot of Polish food to China because we have problems with Russia right now and Russia was rather a huge market for Polish fruit, vegetables and meat,” Professor Bogdan Goralczyk of the Central & Eastern Europe Development Institute said.
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