LONDON—Participants discussed the opportunities for cooperation between China and Europe with regard to the Belt and Road (B&R) initiative and global governance at the Ninth Europe-China Forum in Brussels, Belgium, Nov. 18-19.

Themed “Convergence, divergence and the vital space between,” the forum was jointly held by the Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the European Union, the EU think tank Friends of Europe, the China Public Diplomacy Association (CPDA) and the China Institute for Reform and Development.

Phil Hogan, EU Commissioner for trade, contended that China and Europe are significant partners in addressing global challenges. China and Europe shall deepen cooperation in promoting sustainable development, tackling climate change and upholding multilateralism.

Gunnar Wiegand, managing director for Asia and the Pacific at the European External Action Service, said that China and Europe should push forward cooperation and enhance mutual trust. On the basis of ensuring fair and sustainable development, the EU is willing to strategically cooperate with China on developing the B&R, which will bring more opportunities for China-EU development.

Rana Mitter, director of the University of Oxford China Centre, said that with the deepening of reform and opening up, China is moving from conventional manufacturing to more hightechnology sectors in the global value chain.

Mitter expected there to be more openness in the Chinese market. “Trade and culture can go hand in hand—It was like that during the days of the old Silk Road, so there is no reason why it can’t happen with the new one!”

Alicia García-Herrero, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a think tank based in Brussels, said that China is integrating vertically into the global value chain and there is an increasing dependence on China.

In 2020, China and the EU will celebrate the 45th anniversary of their diplomatic relations. Wang Hongjian, charge d’affaires at the Chinese Mission to the EU, said that cooperation has always been the mainstream for the two sides as comprehensive strategic partners.

China and the EU should strengthen cooperation in coping with climate change and promoting green development, provide new momentum for China-EU relations, and jointly maintain multilateralism and improve global governance, Wang suggested.

CPDA President Wu Hailong believed that China and the EU provide developmental opportunities for each other. The two sides are partners rather than institutional opponents, and their common interests far outweigh their differences. The potential for China-EU cooperation is huge.

We should continue to deepen mutual trust and promote pragmatic cooperation in a wide range of areas, Wu said, including trade and investment, connectivity, high-tech, green and low-carbon economies, and third-party markets.

China and Europe can cooperate in key areas such as education, think tank research, high technology and pharmaceuticals, and financial services, said Chris Rowley, a visiting fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. In addition, China and the EU can deepen cooperation in foreign direct investment and procurement.

Rowley said that China-UK trade has increased dramatically. For example, from 1999 to 2017, China rose from the UK’s 26th to 6th largest export market.

China and the UK are also continuing to deepen cooperation in international financial markets. In the future, Rowley said that China and the UK will continue to deepen their cooperation in the development and supervision of the digital financial industry and continue to promote investment and financing cooperation under the B&R initiative.

Plamen Tonchev, head of the Asia Unit at the Athens-based Institute of International Economic Relations, believed that China-Greek cooperation has brought development opportunities to Greece. The Chinese market is huge and Greek exports to China are gradually increasing. Greece will make good use of the mechanism of “17 + 1” cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European countries to deepen China-Greek investment cooperation and cultural exchanges.

According to a Bruegel report, China and the EU can take more measures to seize the potential trade and investment opportunities between them. The sheer scale and dynamism of the Chinese market coupled with China’s shift from an export-oriented to a domestic demand-oriented growth model mean that these opportunities may grow over time.

The report says that China and the EU have embraced extensive economic and trade cooperation opportunities, but the continued development of the Chinese market and China’s opening up policy will provide more opportunities for the common development of China and the EU.