President XI Jinping’s “One Belt, One Road” or “Belt and Road” initiative, launched in 2013, is a Eurasian grand strategy that seeks to expand and secure maritime routes and road infrastructure networks for China from Asia across Africa to the Middle East and Europe.

Beijing’s vision of the nature and aims of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) include various maritime sections, land bridge connections and transport corridors across various continents. Together, they expand the BRI’s geography and thematic content. The geo-economic implications of this orchestrated push from Beijing are potentially vast and long-term. They can shift commercial and geo-economic axes of entire continents.

The Balkan Silk Road is the name given to the transport route and logistics corridor China has begun to establish in the Balkan region under the BRI. The Balkans, and by extension South-eastern Europe, is a region where China can empirically test various elements of the BRI.

The route starts with the flagship BRI investment into the Greek port of Piraeus, the first major European container port for ships entering the Mediterranean from the Suez Channel. It further extends with infrastructure projects (roads, railways, bridge construction, thermal power plants, etc.) into neighboring countries inside and outside the European Union.

All these issues will be discussed at the international conference “Constructing China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Europe” which takes place in the European Academy Berlin. The event is organized by the Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft / Southeast Europe Association and the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations in cooperation with the European Academy Berlin and the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce.

You can find the conference program ➤ here. The conference language is English.

If you would like to take part, please fill out the ➤ Registration formular and send it to: info@sogde.org