The US project that is challenging China in Balkans

China’s New Silk Road Initiative is a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure development plan launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping with development and investment initiatives from East Asia and Europe. As part of this initiative, Chinese President Jinping also proposed the construction of several water canals on the Indochina Peninsula, the opening of the Nicaragua Canal in Central America and the opening of the canal in the Presevo Valley to connect the Danube with Vardar and the newly privatized port of Thessaloniki. . The new Chinese strategy meant independence from US-led or allied-controlled sea routes and crossings.

Xi Jinping in the Balkans reactivated the old American project for the water canal in the Presevo Valley. They signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Serbian, Macedonian and Greek Governments.

Chinese engineers performed the feasibility for free and came out with the conclusion that the project is accomplishable and financially justifiable.

While the Chinese company “Gezhouba Group” is preparing the master plan for the implementation of field work, support for the Chinese project came from all governmental and non-governmental political classes in Serbia, Macedonia and Greece. Some time ago, former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras gave a long statement to CNN in Greece, saying that “The construction of the water canal would change the geography of the Balkans.”

The Obama and Trump administrations had largely tacitly monitored the rise of Chinese influence and expansion in southeastern Europe.

But apparently the new US Biden administration has decided to move the cards.

“The West came up with new infrastructure initiatives to rival China” was Biden’s stance in a telephone conversation last Friday with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, urging the West to launch a new infrastructure initiative in balance with the Chinese New Silk Road Initiative.

Major Western infrastructure initiatives include the reactivation of the 1909 American project to construct a navigable canal from the southern Morava to the northern tip of the Vardar and to create optimal conditions for navigation between Thessaloniki and the powerful economies of the Central and Northern European states.

The American weekly “Bloomberg” in its issue 361, at the beginning of February this year quotes the former American philanthropist George Soros given during the works of the Schiller Institute at the end of 2020 that the construction of this canal should not make America stand aside “, demanding a more serious involvement of Washington.

The world economy depends mainly on the rapid movement of goods and the trauma caused by the closure of the Suez Canal, which once again turned the eyes to the geostrategic importance of waterways for the world economic order.