Hello and welcome.

My name is Sophia Bash and you're listening to the CER podcast.

Hello and welcome back.

Today I am joined by Ian Bond, foreign policy director here at the CER.

This week, the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation is held in Beijing under

the chairmanship of President Xi Jinping with Russian President Vladimir Putin and around 30 other

world leaders in attendance.

Just to start with, maybe in a couple of sentences, Ian, what is the Belt and Road Forum and

why should we care?

Well, China has this initiative called One Belt One Road or the Belt and Road initiative,

which is about building links between China and Europe primarily,

although it also stretches to Africa and the Middle East.

And this is an opportunity for China to bring together a big group of international leaders,

leaders of international organizations, and to promote this initiative.

And frankly, it's the kind of thing that the United States used to do

in bringing together lots of leaders to talk about a big, comprehensive

investment program for a difficult part of the world.

So we want to take this as an occasion to dig a little deeper into a very complex relationship

triangle, if you will.

That is the relationship of three neighbors,

China, Russia and the European Union. Let us start with the relationship between China and Russia.

He writes that the two are often bracketed together as the West's most important adversaries, but that in fact it would be an error for the West to pursue

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