Throughout history, perhaps no one traveled the Silk Road and toured China more than the great Venetian trader and explorer Marco Polo, whose legendary tale is still fondly told to this day. But he warned people: “I have not told half of what I saw.” While modern technology has turned the world into a more accessible global village, the gap between Europe and “the Middle Kingdom” remains, in many ways, as mystifying as ever.
Recently, China’s top leader Xi Jinping went on a “friendship” tour to some key EU member states, with an entourage of more than 200 business leaders and with a few multibillion contracts signed to buy airplanes and cars in France and Germany. While China’s state-run media Xinhua hailed the trip as a new chapter for cooperation between the EU and China, Europe looks still dubious whether to cozy up or stand up to China over a wide range of issues, unable to fully grasp what is behind “the bamboo curtain.”
