Navigating the Global Order through Trade and Discourse: EU’s Global Gateway and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Africa

Abstract

The European Union (EU) promotes the Global Gateway (EUGG) as a values-based model of infrastructure development, widely interpreted as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Both initiatives operate across overlapping geographies, particularly in Africa. This article explores how the EU narrates its identity through the EUGG in relation to China, and how that narrative reads against EU–China–Africa trade.

Drawing on Strategic Narrative theory, the study combines a critical discourse analysis of the four documents launching the EUGG with EU and Chinese trade data for six African countries (2001–23), analysed through correlation and lagged regression.

EUGG discourse names China only once, instead constructing the EU as a morally distinct partner through a dependency narrative and an undefined circle of ‘like-minded partners’. Trade data shows EU and Chinese trade moving in parallel rather than displacing one another.

The EU narrates distinction while its trade patterns reflect co-presence with China. Acknowledging that co-presence could bring the EU’s narrative closer to its own stated values of transparency and partnership.

EU Global Gateway in Africa; EU’s silence on China; strategic narratives theory; EU–China–Africa relations; EU policy discourse; EU–China trade in Africa