Paper short abstract:

This article discusses how the new EU PV Ecodesign regulation under preparation could meet both EU and China's aims of decarbonisation, while supporting strategic priorities linked to de-coupling in a mutually-beneficial way.

Paper long abstract:

Solar Photovoltaics (PV) is an important pillar of the clean energy transition worldwide, and both EU and China rely on PV to achieve carbon-neutrality by 2050 and 2060 respectively. Europe is heavily dependent on PV imports from China (87% of all imported PV components) and due to the concentration of PV production in (still) carbon-intensive Chinese economy, PV panels’ pre-use stage entails significant carbon footprint, which further affects decarbonisation goals of both the EU and China. In order to ensure that newly installed PV modules are both affordable and environmentally friendly, the Commission is currently working on regulatory measures under the Eco-design framework for the PV products that enter the EU Single Market. These measures include: quality and durability improvements; reparability and recyclability; and carbon footprint.

Crucially, the EU-China interdependency in green transition, as exemplified by the PV sector, is overshadowed by the growing tensions between the trends of de-carbonisation and de-coupling (embedded in ideas such as EU’s Open Strategic Autonomy and China’s Dual Circulation). The EU Ecodesign regulation under preparation could have the potential to help build synergies between both regions and between both trends. This article argues that if well-timed and responsive to the needs of the businesses, the EU member-states, and the wider strategic priorities of both the EU and China, the legislation could meet both actors’ aim of decarbonisation, while supporting strategic priorities linked to de-coupling in a mutually-beneficial way.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the BRI in Eastern Poland as an infrastructural, urban, and colonial project, explored in the transhipment “dry” port located at Poland's and the EU's border with Belarus.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the materialisation the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Eastern Poland as an infrastructural, urban, and colonial project. It focuses on the particular place on the BRI map: the transhipment “dry” port located near the village of Małaszewicze, a few kilometres from the European Union (EU) border with Belarus. Many local and national actors identify Małaszewicze as strategic hub where China-Europe freight trains are required to change gauge between the European and Russian track. The paper unravels, first, how geopolitical interests embedded in the BRI materialise in a concrete infrastructural project of “the gateway to Europe”. Second, inspired by the growing “urban” literature on the BRI, the impact of port on local communities and institutions is analysed, mapping their competing interests and claims. Crucially, despite the narrative of cooperation and mutual benefit, the fragile connection with China’s financial and symbolic capital exacerbates competition with other “gateways” to the EU, and reveals power asymmetries among the actors involved. Third, the paper considers a decolonial critique of the Małaszewicze port. Located in one of the EU’s poorest and “least developed” regions, supposedly suffering from an important “infrastructure gap”, Małaszewicze is narrated as a sign of future modernity and prosperity — without considering the unevenness of the development it heralds. These questions are explored through interviews with local officials, entrepreneurs and inhabitants; analysis of official documents and news articles; and photography as research method.

Paper short abstract:

This contribution investigates the relations between the ports of Piraeus and Trieste and their hinterlands to explore the heterogeneous and complex urbanities generated by Chinese and European infrastructure investments as they entangle the logistics and productive spaces of European peripheries.

Paper long abstract:

This contribution investigates how large-scale infrastructural projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Next Generation EU, far from materializing in standardized and confined spaces, intertwine with local urbanization processes and long-established economic trends, in a way that is profoundly altering logistics and productive spaces of peripheral areas and secondary trade routes across Europe.

To this end, this contribution focuses on the infrastructural transformations and upgrades of the maritime routes along the Adriatic Sea, their gateways of Piraeus (Greece) to Trieste (Italy), and the complex interactions with their hinterlands Aspropyrgos and Trieste Province respectively. Two are the main focuses of this research. First, how Chinese investments in upgrading infrastructures are melting/competing with EU and local ones. Second, how these investments transform the hinterland of the two strongly different ports. For instance, since 2009, when COSCO Pacific took control of its operations in Piraeus, the port has expanded without any local infrastructural investments, giving space to informal activities and unregulated practices to spring up around new developments. Conversely, in Trieste the Chinese investments are improving the railway system in a complementary way to those of local governments and Next Generation EU. As a result, high-tech factories have settled to benefit from the new network. With their many differences, these two cases shed light on how Chinese infrastructure investments impact Europe's peripheral areas, the multiple actors, scales, and temporalities involved in these processes, and the heterogeneous spaces they generate.

Paper short abstract:

The study uses the case of China’s li-ion battery investments in Europe to investigate how the geopolitical tensions and uncertainties of different scales shape the formation process of Global Production Network and allow lead firms from emerging economies to inversely expand to advanced economies.

Paper long abstract:

To confront human-induced climate change and seize the next wave of industrial revolution, China is actively promoting the diffusion of renewable energy technologies and has cultivated its massive electronic vehicle (EV) and lithium-ion battery production capacity and market in the past two decades. Since the market and technology burst in around 2020, the Chinese lithium-ion battery industry has held up to 60% of the global market, while the new lead firm, Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL), alone supplies over 30% globally (as of H1, 2022). Not satisfied with the rapidly booming domestic market and encouraged by China’s “Going-out strategy”, CATL is proactively expanding to install new capacities overseas, such as strategically coupling with conventional European carmakers and building production lines in Erfurt, Germany and Debrecen, Hungary. Meanwhile, with the increasing geopolitical tensions between China and the West, and the rising of protectionism and reverse globalization around the world, more countries applied reshoring and “friendshoring” policies to keep production networks (PN) domestic or within allies that are seemed secured. This provides an additional pull force for China’s EV battery industry to move to Europe. Therefore, through this case study, I will explain how the geopolitical tensions and uncertainties of different scales shape the formation process of Global Production Network (GPN) and allow lead firms from emerging economies to inversely expand to advanced economies.