Making Sense of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – What’s at Stake for Sweden and Europe?

The Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) invites you to a discussion on the impact of China’s global trade and infrastructure push, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The seminar will mark the establishment of the Stockholm Belt and Road Observatory, a research network created to tackle questions arising in relation to BRI and China’s growing global footprint. Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the BRI is connecting countries across Asia, Europe and other continents through an extensive web of infrastructure. While the Chinese government assures widely shared benefits, doubts and concerns remain about the drivers and consequences of the project. How is China’s proactive economic foreign policy impacting Sweden and Europe? How does BRI relate to Chinese global leadership? Are there opportunities for Sweden and the EU in engaging China? And how can we contain possible risks emerging from the BRI? Speakers: Viking Bohman, Coordinator of the Stockholm Belt and Road Observatory, Jerker Hellström, Head of Asia and Middle East Programme at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), Åsa Malmström Rognes, Researcher at the Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Mikael Weissmann, Associate Professor at the Swedish Defence University and Senior Research Fellow at UI and Jiayi Zhou, Researcher at Stockholm International Peace Research