Against the prevailing narrative of the The Belt and Road as a top-down strategy to spread China’s geopolitical influence, there is the BRI’s impact through its first decade as emanating «from the middle out and bottom up» via transport-enabled corridors traversing a large number of regions within and across national territories.

In 2021, the EU exported €223 billion of goods to China and imported goods worth €472 billion. China is thereby Europe’s foremost trading partner when it comes to imports of goods, of which a substantial part passes through EU ports, in particular maritime ports.