China tries to ease OBOR political concerns

Xi Jinping has sought to allay concerns among China’s neighbours that its ambitious Belt and Road scheme linking the country to Central Asia, Europe and Africa will undermine other regional integration initiatives, the Financial Times reports. “There is a great deal of common ground and complementarily among the strategies. We could make good use of this to promote and reinforce development for all of us,” Xi told 28 foreign leaders and other delegates at a conference in Beijing held to promote Belt and Road. “We must… reject beggar thy neighbour practices.” A China-Russia fund appears aimed at easing concern in Moscow that Belt and Road will undermine the Eurasian Economic Union – a pet project of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. Some EU officials are privately anxious about China’s increasing influence in central and Eastern Europe. India boycotted the Belt and Road summit, saying the project ignored “core concerns about sovereignty and territorial integrity.”