Poland’s perspective on the Belt and Road Initiative

ABSTRACT The idea of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) became a central project for Chinese foreign policy and a crucial tool shaping China’s global external policies. Since president Xi Jinping announced this initiative in autumn 2013 in Astana, BRI has gained international attention and remarkably influenced the international discourse on China’s policy. In Poland, this Chinese-born initiative was predominantly interpreted as an economic and political program based on infrastructural projects that mostly include new railway connections and maritime routes. Secondly, it was perceived as an initiative dealing with production surplus of China, as well as Beijing’s plan to open its doors wider toward the world. Thirdly, it was regarded as a geopolitical concept aiming at changing the global order. There is no clear answer to the question regarding how Poland perceives the BRI and what the state government plans to achieve with participating in the project. Part of the political scene regards BRI as a threat, the other part as an opportunity. Optimism has reached peak during president’s Xi Jinping visit to Poland in June 2016 and turned into skepticism in January 2017, when previous Polish Minister of National Defense Antoni Macierewicz decided to block the sale of a parcel for a logistic hub that meant to be part of BRI. In the end, it seems that Poland is guided by a strategy of wait-and-see, especially when presenting BRI as a global challenge, rather than elaborating a comprehensive participatory program in the initiative.