The priority of China’s investment in Juncker Plan should be Digital

Today, ChinaEU has learned an exciting news from EurActive that the European Commission and China have concluded technical work allowing Beijing to start pouring up to €10 billion under Juncker Plan, a €315 billion investment to revive EU economy with primarily support to innovative projects.

ChinaEU is glad to see this concrete progress just months after Beijing announced its willingness to participate in the Juncker Plan last September, when Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen visited Beijing.

Being among the first to raise the idea that China should get involved in the Juncker Plan, ChinaEU has been endeavoring in bridging Chinese and European digital sectors over last year. And thanks to Ambassador Yang Yanyi, the Chinese Mission as well as the Chinese government, the initiative has been carried forward.

Digital is the future, and we believe this future is in the hand of China.

China is the biggest and fastest growing market for Internet, telecom, and high tech in the world. For example, after catching up and surpassing EU and US in 4G rollout, China is now well positioned to lead in 5G and is most likely to take a substantial role in establishing the future 5G global standard. It has become a super power in the digital economy, demonstrating the capacity to generate real high tech breakthroughs.

ChinaEU believes thus that digital should be the priority for China to invest in. It would be good if China could create a fund for digital technology in Europe. This would not only generate numerous business opportunities between China and the EU, increase China’s engagement in European digital market, but it also can be seen as a very positive signal of mutual trust and shared vision on the future.

ChinaEU is and will be highly engaged in promoting cooperation between China and EU in digital economy.

When we invited Minister Lu Wei to Brussels last July, he talked about setting up of a Digital Silk Road between Europe and China. We like this concept very much and would like to see Chinese and European companies working together for the creation of a new road of 5G, superfast broadband and e-commerce.

One of our most important initiatives is the establishment of China-EU Digital Research Center, which aims at creating a systematic work of monitoring and comparing legislations and regulations on ecommerce and could services, data protection, 5G and future networks, copyrights and patents through working together with Chinese and European universities, in order to provide a better understanding of the regulatory environment as well as to remove all unnecessary obstacles for bilateral trade and investment.

With support of China Internet Development Foundation (CIDF), we will launch the Research Center later this year.

In the near future, ChinaEU will launch another initiative named SilkCamp, a joint boot-camp program aimed at supporting European startups to navigate in the Chinese market and vice-versa, supporting Chinese startups to scale up in Europe.

Contributing in Juncker Plan as the first non-EU country, China should take the occasion to focus on digital investments, which will enable China to gain more say and remain competitive in the global economy.

To view the full article on EurActive, please click here.