Europe and China’s Competing Ideas in the Belt and Road Initiative

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is more than an infrastructure project; it has become a discursive battleground where competing ideas about cooperation, benefit, and global order are contested. The article argues that China uses the BRI to exert ideational power, promoting political ideas such as ‘mutual benefit’ and a ‘new model of cooperation’ to shape political discourse to its advantage. The European Union (EU), relying on its normative power and universalist vocabulary, underestimates this ideational dimension and often misinterprets China’s political ideas. This imbalance shows how the EU risks losing discursive influence in an ongoing contest over meaning and agenda-setting.