The BRI also exhibits the potential for large-scale misinvestment. Its critics have already identified a Chinese-financed bridge over the Moraca canyon in Montenegro as a classic example of a bridge to nowhere. Though it was designed to link landlocked Serbia to the Adriatic coast, it currently doesn’t connect anything at all, nor will it for the foreseeable future. It is, in other words, merely a road into debt.
With French President Emmanuel Macron pushing for a European Renaissance, one can imagine a future in which Europe is integrated not just politically but physically, through high-speed railroads, electricity grids, and oil and gas pipelines. Strictly financial globalization has ignored that kind of connectedness for far too long.1
Yet European countries are divided over China. Many governments and corporations are rightly worried about the theft of intellectual property. But others see Chinese investment as a welcome new source of financing, or as a way to counterbalance the influence of northern European countries within the EU.
At any rate, the Chinese approach to globalization should prompt Europe to explore alternative development paths of its own. That could mean going beyond the modest and limited “Juncker Plan,” and pursuing a far more ambitious agenda.
The global financial crisis confronted Europe with the challenge of building a more stable financial system. But that will not be enough to create a durable form of globalization. Xi’s recent European tour pointed to one possible path forward. It is now Europeans’ turn to decide how they will establish connections and channel investment to areas that have been ignored and impoverished for too long.
Harold James is professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University and a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation. A specialist on German economic history and on globalization, he is a co-author of the new book "The Euro and The Battle of Ideas," and the author of "The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle," "Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm," and "Making the European Monetary Union."