Chinese investment and embracing of the Belt and Road Initiative are helping nations become a thriving gateway to Europe

Every European country boasts of its advantage as a gateway when trying to attract foreign investment.

But the reality is that in Central and Eastern Europe, and even in the south, no ports can compete with Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg, no airports are busier than those near Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and London, and the financial hubs are all in Western Europe.

To combat the negative impacts of the financial and European debt crises since 2008, the Central and Eastern European countries have been aiming to improve their competitiveness by exploring opportunities.

They have taken notice of the model used to revive the Asian economies, especially China's lasting boom. They have started to improve infrastructure by expanding highways, ports and airports, building high-tech parks and ambitiously attracting foreign investment.

Since 2012, China and 16 CEE countries have held annual summits in Warsaw, Bucharest, Belgrade, Suzhou and Riga to discuss and implement plans.

In 2016 alone, up to 50 projects in different areas, such as infrastructure, energy, education and finance, were completed and a work program has been set out, lasting until 2020. At the Riga summit last year, they rolled out a list of dozens of tasks, which will be reviewed at the upcoming summit in Budapest.

Duan Jielong, Chinese ambassador to Hungary, says that since President Xi Jinping proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, new impetus has been injected into cooperation between China and the CEE countries.

"Within the background of President Xi's Belt and Road Initiative, new opportunities and perspectives have occurred regarding cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European countries," says Duan.

In his view, China's investment in the region has started to become active.

Duan says that the number of Chinese businesses investing in Hungary reached 40 at the beginning of this year.

"Last year, the number was around 30," says Duan. He doesn't reveal the exact amount invested, but says the targets were mainly auto parts, the chemical industry and electronic products.

Duan says the railway project linking Budapest and Belgrade is a landmark investment, and the governments of the three countries involved have maintained close communication in an effort to launch the plan by the end of this year.

The European Commission is reviewing the project report before it gives the green light.

Using the land-sea expressway, containers arriving at the port of Piraeus in Greece can be offloaded and directly transported by rail to Budapest, via Skopje in Macedonia, and Belgrade, the Serbian capital. The countries have also reaffirmed their support for a cooperation initiative involving ports in the Adriatic, Baltic and Black Seas, and along the in land water ways.

They know that the Adriatic-Baltic-Black Sea seaport cooperation will help widen the scope of China-CEE cooperation and contribute to greater synergy between the Belt and Road Initiative, the development strategies of CEE countries and the European Union's Trans-European Transport Network.

Meanwhile, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have already benefited from the China-Europe freight train service, which was launched in 2011 and has become an important part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xinhua reported that, by the end of March, a total of 3,557 freight trains had used the route, with services reaching 27 Chinese cities and 28 cities in 11 countries in Europe.

After the announcement of Xi's initiative and the implementation of initial projects - which aim to connect Asia, Europe and Africa by improving infrastructural connectivity and boosting investment and trade - the countries' "gateway advantage" of regional, and even cross-continental, importance has stood out.

The Czech Republic aims to build itself into a regional aviation and financial center, says Ma Keqing, Chinese ambassador to the country.

The leaders of Poland, with a population of up to 40 million, hope to turn it a regional and European hub.

And even Greece, a country often making headlines as it struggles with bailout talks, has a national strategy of embedding itself in the Belt and Road Initiative and turning itself into a regional energy, shipping and logistics center.

"Greece has been implementing its national development strategy while participating in the Belt and Road Initiative," says Zou Xiaoli, China's ambassador to Greece.

To further engage with the project, Czech President Milos Zeman, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo have confirmed they will be joining other leaders from Europe and the rest of the world at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing on May 14 and 15.Up to 30 state leaders from around the world will be attending the forum and the leaders' round table.

Those from Eastern and Central Europe will be putting forward their opinions on how to expand cooperation on infrastructure, industrial investment, economy and trade, energy and resources, finances, people-to-people and cultural exchanges, ecological civilization and maritime affairs.

Czech President Zeman has invested a lot of energy in it. In the month before his departure to China, he has met China's young sourcer players and a group of students from Sichuan Airlines who are working for their pilot certificates at the flight school F AIR, about an hour's drive from Prague.

Michal Markovic, director of the flight school, says the students will stay for 14 months to complete their pilot license integral course, which consists of almost 900 hours of theoretical knowledge and 230 hours of flight training.

"In the end, the students should obtain a European licenses and this is the first time we have invited a large group from China," says Markovic, who believes that his project plays a useful part in deepening people-to-people exchanges between China and the CEE countries.

In the Czech Republic, three Silk Road-themed think tanks have been setup, and former prime minister Jiri Paroubek has been busy promoting bilateral cooperation.

Now he is mobilizing resources to set up a cooperation promotion center for Zhejiang province in the Czech Republic.

"I think we have had a satisfying start in boosting our economic cooperation and it still needs some time to create the infrastructure for relations," says Paroubek.

"Some Chinese companies are very successful in our country, and I think that others are now studying the possibilities of the Czech market."

To further explore opportunities, the China-CEE Institute, a think tank, was set up in Budapest in April by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to focus on cooperation between China and Central and Eastern Europe.

President of CASS Wang Weiguang says the setting up of the new institute is a milestone for China's think tanks going global. Huang Ping, general director of the Institute of European Studies of CASS, also heads the China-CEE Institute.

"This will be the first think tank we have set up in Europe, and it will play a big role in boosting the Belt and Road Initiative," Wang says.

The trade volume of the CEE countries, which have a population of 123 million, with China amounted to just $50 billion in 2012, equaling that between China and Italy.

China's investment in the countries had equaled that of China in Sweden, and their investment in China was no more than that of Austria.

The countries were eager for road and railway construction, port and power plant expansion and keen on attracting Chinese investment.

Now, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce, trade volume between the two sides has grown at a moderate speed despite the bleak global situation, and investment has increased by a big margin in many countries.

Li Manchang, China's ambassador to Serbia, says the amount of Chinese investment underway and in the pipeline in the country amounts to more than $10 billion. Serbia has a population of around 7 million and was the first country to grant Chinese passport holders visa-free entry for stays of up to 30 days.

"I trust China's investment and Serbia's participation in the Belt and Road Initiative will help my country speed up accession of European Union," says Dusko Dimitrijevic, former director of the Belgrade-based Institute of International Politics and Economics.

"They can help us improve connectivity and infrastructure standards."

Zheng Jinqiang, Wang Keju and Zhang Zhaoqing in Brussels contributed to this story.

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