47 Global News Post 1

Diverging narratives on the Belt and Road Initiative in Greece and China by Andreas Bloom

This article examines the differences in narrative between the Greek media and the Chinese media when discussing the Greek port of Piraeus. To understand the situation in Piraeus, you must first understand China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road Initiative is a global infrastructure development strategy that the Chinese government began in 2013. This initiative is a major part of President Xi Jinping’s foreign policy and involves investment in nearly 70 countries and international organizations. Although the plan is supposed to add trillions to world GDP, critics have voiced reluctancy in working with the CCP and therefore there is sometimes pushback in the way business is conducted by the Chinese government. The article looks at different perspectives regarding China’s investment into the Piraeus, one of the busiest port cities in the world. The article determines that the Greek perspectives vary from being friendly to being critical of the situation, and they are not afraid to voice concerns when issues do occasionally arise. The Chinese media on the other hand tends to be much more favorable towards the situation, and almost never even addresses when disputes or issues occur.

The evidence for this article comes from a report by a Greek think-tank that was released by the Institute of International Economic Relations (Greek organization). The report does a good job presenting evidence of all the different publications that comment on the situation and goes into depth to show how often they mention Piraeus, what they say about the situation, and the typical tone of those articles. They draw hundreds of media items from Greek and Chinese media outlets.

All the evidence comes from a Greek think-tank, and although the intention of their study was to look at different perspectives, they interpret all these articles through a Greek lens. This makes it possible that they focused more on Grecian interests and therefore were more likely to say that Chinese media was skewed and not their own Grecian media.