On May 15, 2019, SIAS jointly held a roundtable discussion on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) together with the Shanghai Development Research Foundation (SDRF). Nicolas Veron, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), visited SIAS and gave a lecture on the different attitudes of the US and EU towards the BRI and their implications. Mr. Veron talked about EU member states’ participation in the BRI and the economic cooperation between the EU and China. He went on to compare the different attitudes of the US and EU towards the BRI, and shared his ideas on future EU-China cooperation on the initiative.

Academics from the SDRF, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS), Fudan University and the Shanghai University of International Business and Economics joined SIAS research staff at the meeting. Those who participated exchanged their views with Mr. Veron on EU-China cooperation on infrastructure and the prospect of the EU and US participation in the BRI, among other issues.