Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The EU is struggling to counter China’s growing influence around the world as Beijing proves more agile at providing infrastructure investment to countries in the global south, the bloc’s development chief has warned.Jutta Urpilainen, European commissioner for international partnerships, said complex bureaucracy and environmental and social conditions attached to EU financing made it hard for the bloc’s international investment strategy to counterbalance China’s Belt and Road Initiative.“We are living in an era...
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.By upgrading China’s relationship with Hungary, Xi Jinping this week made the central European state led by maverick Prime Minister Viktor Orbán a model he hopes will be followed by others in Europe and beyond, Chinese officials have said.Visiting Budapest at the end of a five-day, three-nation tour of Europe, Xi hailed what is now officially China and Hungary’s “all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership for the new era”, a description the officials said...