Green and Multipolar Logistics: The Impact of the Bri in the Balkans and the Future of Sino-European Cooperation
Vincenzo Maria Di Mino, Marco Siragusa[1]
Abstract
Since its origin, the European project was based on the movement of goods, capital and people. In this sense, the Union has seen the proliferation of logistical corridors, high-speed transport projects, hubs and checkpoints to better control and regulate movement flows. Against a backdrop of continuing austerity, China’s ‘Silk and Belt Road Initiative’, which crosses South-Eastern Europe, not only constitutes an enormous opportunity for investment and structural economic renovation but can also be interpreted as a project for rethinking a new Sino-European multipolarity under the banner of cooperation and a new ecological sustainability of economic and social development.
The project can be analyzed along two axes. The first analyses logistical and infrastructural operations from an ecological point of view, measuring their impact on the surrounding environment and trying to rethink them on the basis of broader participation in decision-making processes that can bring out collective needs.
The second rethinks the Silk Road project as part of a broader integration process, aimed at eliminating the geographical and social gap between the different European macro-areas. In this sense, as well, the Chinese project in the European space can act as a building block for a new multipolarity. The subject of the following proposal is the analysis of the possibilities opened up by Chinese infrastructure and urbanization projects from the points listed above.
[1] Vincenzo Maria Di Mino, Independent researcher on political and social theory, Italy; Marco Siragusa, Ph.D in International Studies, University of Naples “L’Orientale”