US pushes Greece to stop acting as China’s ‘dragon’s head’ into Europe
- Athens under pressure in scramble for influence between Washington and Beijing with high-level visits from both powers
- US seeks to counter Chinese influence through Belt and Road Initiative with its own funding alternative
As US-China rivalry intensifies, European states have found themselves caught in the middle. The Post looks at how countries on the continent are responding, ranging from anti-China, to China-friendly, and those trying to walk a line between Washington and Beijing. The third in the four-part series looks at Greece. Read part one, on Portugal, here, and part two, on the Czech Republic, here.
As Europe was fighting a seemingly unmanageable Covid-19 outbreak in September, Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis rolled out the red carpet for an inconspicuous foreign guest.
Fresh in his job, Boehler’s visit – quickly followed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – was a clear signal of Washington’s concern over China’s expanding interest and influence in Europe, especially Greece. The country is home to one of the most iconic belt and road projects: the port of Piraeus, among Europe’s biggest and now controlled by China’s state-owned shipping giant Cosco.
Greece may be on the fringe of the European Union geographically, but it has become a key focus in the intensifying scramble for global influence between the US and China, which has spilled over into Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
“China itself has identified [Greece] as the dragon’s head of the Belt and Road Initiative in Europe,” the US ambassador to Greece, Geoffrey Pyatt, told local newspaper I Kathimerini earlier this year. “We’re going to have a debate in terms of how we get the balance right in dealing with the challenge that China presents. China’s not going to go away.”