HE had been gone for almost a week but the tremors from US President Donald Trump’s disastrous European tour continue to reverberate across the continent.

Significantly, the key beneficiary of Europe’s disillusionment with Washington appears to be China, whose Prime Minister Li Keqiang was in Brussels last week for the annual EU-China summit.

Trump’s erratic and rude performance in Brussels — the lecturing, shoving and showing off — has left a deep imprint on many EU leaders and policymakers.

The discussions with the Chinese premier in contrast were polite, friendly and constructive — and also reassuringly productive as Brussels and Beijing agreed to strengthen their cooperation on climate change.

Used to working in tandem with the US on most policies — including towards China and other Asian countries — Europeans now find themselves sidelined by Washington and appalled at the US president’s positions on climate change, trade and on Nato.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who finds herself in the position of “leader of the free world”, says its time Europeans “fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans,” it’s clear that something deep and important is going on.

But adjusting to new geopolitical realities is not proving easy. Luckily, the potentially seismic shift in transatlantic relations is taking place at a time when France, under the presidency of the pro-EU Emmanuel Macron, is a ready and willing member of the Franco-German alliance which has traditionally driven the EU forward.

However, even a more cohesive EU-27 (with Britain’s departure) will need to work with other countries and organisations on key 21st Century global challenges.

Which brings us to China and the fact that President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has the potential to spark a more ambitious and truly strategic EU-China conversation on crucial issues of global peace, security and economic governance.

Europe has so far focused on the obvious trade, business and connectivity dimensions of China’s “project of the century”. That is understandable: In a world hungry for more infrastructure, BRI is certainly about massive investments in roads, railways, bridges and ports. It is also about digital connectivity and expanding financial and cultural links. Businesses in Europe world are right to explore just how they can secure a piece of the cake. The EU-China connectivity platform has an important role to play in facilitating such a conversation.

Europe should not make the mistake, however, of viewing BRI solely through a narrow trade and business prism. As this column has said before it is not just an economic “project” but a reflection of Beijing’s ambitious vision of its role in a rapidly-transforming world.

As such it creates an array of hitherto largely-unexplored opportunities for a deeper EU-China dialogue on issues ranging from peace and security to climate change, Africa and Agenda 2030. Three important areas deserve priority attention.

First, given their joint interest in Africa, the EU and China should use the opportunities opened up by BRI to explore ways of working together to boost the continent’s still vastly-untapped development potential. Europe may once have viewed China’s growing economic influence and outreach in Africa with a degree of wariness and suspicion.

But the migrant crisis has made EU governments more acutely aware of the need to inject more funds into Africa’s quest for jobs, growth and development. Cooperation with China on issues of Africa’s development as well as the achievement of the sustainable development goals is now definitely in the EU’s interest.

Second, China’s new blueprint provides room for a stronger EU-China conversation on global economic governance, including in the vital area of climate change leadership as well as multilateral trade liberalisation and financial regulation.

Third, President Xi Jinping’s description of BRI as a “road for peace” and the EU’s recent steps to strengthen its defence identity open up opportunities for more pro-active EU-China cooperation on issues of global peace and security, including North Korea, Iran, Syria and Yemen as well as counter-terrorism. This also puts the onus on China to ensure that BRI projects such as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) do not exacerbate regional tensions.

The EU-China relationship will benefit greatly from a wider, “beyond-trade” conversation which looks outside purely bilateral ties to ways in which Brussels and Beijing can work together constructively on the global stage. Such interactions can go a long way in creating more trust between the two sides. It can also help to create a more stable relationship anchored in a better understanding of each other’s priorities and concerns.

Over the coming months, as projects are identified, investments are lined up and work starts in earnest, China will have to ensure that BRI becomes more transparent, procurement rules become more rigorous and projects fit in with the global sustainable development goals.

Slowly but surely as America retreats from the world under President Trump, it looks certain that China and the EU will be seizing more opportunities for cooperation.

—The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2017