A Waseda research project on “China-Japan Competition and Possibilities for Cooperation: Case of Belt and Road Initiative” is running with Peking University since 2019. The idea arised to extend the scope of this research to include European academics, in order to shed light on the changes in European policy towards the BRI.
The workshop has particularly sought to revisit the paradigm of international development based on liberal democracy and capitalism, and, more globally, the dynamics of the political economy of international development and the validity of capitalism.
Within this framework, two questions were central :
- To what extent the BRI can benefit both the supplier and recipient countries of Chinese investment, and how European views on the BRI have changed over the years ;
- Western European democracies have begun to distance themselves from the BRI because of human rights issues in China and trade frictions between the US and China. The second issue was therefore to identify ways of thinking about changes in European policy towards the BRI.
As the workshop led to very thrilling talks, all the presentations will be gathered in an article which will soon be accessible online.
—
What is WBO’s next event ?
WBO 2022 Conference – on September 13th, 2022 – on “New technologies and regulation in Japan and Europe”.
To discover more about this coming event, check out here.
