SIMIC

China overtook the US as the European Union's biggest trading partner for goods last year, a historic turning point driven in part by Europeans' hunger for Chinese medical equipment and electronics during the Covid-19 crisis.

Increasingly, those goods are arriving in Europe through a new trade corridor consisting of railways, airport hubs and ports built with Chinese support, often as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative to bind China more closely to the rest of the world.

By lubricating China-Europe trade, those investments have lifted long-neglected, rust-belt cities in places like Duisburg and Liege, said the report.

Western officials, including in the US, have accused China of using the Belt and Road to trap poor countries in debt.

In Europe, China has adapted its approach, sometimes operating below the radar with local authorities and companies. China subsidizes the trains and tracks while big companies such as Alibaba Group Holding provide direction and demand.

That might help Beijing tie rich countries even more closely to China. Europe's trade links with China have already made it reluctant to accede to Washington's attempts to turn it against the Asian giant.