It’s 10 a.m. and the high-speed train leaves Belgrade’s new glass-and-steel station right on time. Thirty-six minutes later it enters the northern city of Novi Sad in Serbia, the first completed part of a 350 kilometer upgrade to Budapest in Hungary.
The route is the kind of European modernity that Serbia has been longing for for years. Yet the line – being built by China – also represents something more political: how Beijing is helping to transform a corner of Europe while much of the continent now sees it as a strategic rival.
The Belgrade-Budapest rail link will unite the capitals of two countries that have tightened their embrace of China and given the country a backdoor to a continent torn by its relations with the world’s second-largest economy.
