Eye for an Eye: How Trump Helps China Ink Closer Partnership With EU

China and the EU are likely to strengthen their partnership relations amid growing concerns over the uncertainty in relations with the United States, experts argue.

The parties will discuss the prospects of their cooperation during the upcoming China-EU summit in Brussels that be held on June 1.

Experts believe that China and the EU will, among other things, try to reach an agreement on possible activities within the framework of the One Belt, One Road project.

"For the EU, this is one of the projects it must participate in, because the initiative is strategically oriented to the future. China can do without the EU, it is confidently moving toward Europe anyway, so Europeans simply should not miss this Chinese ‘train,'" Russian political expert Vladislav Belov told Sputnik China.

China's most ambitious project, known as One Belt, One Road, is a major economic and trade initiative, concerned with huge infrastructure projects, mostly around transport and energy: roads, bridges, gas pipelines, ports, railways and power plants.

Revealed in 2013, the project calls for the establishment of infrastructure in Eurasia that will be used to create a trade corridor for the direct supply of goods from the eastern to western part of the continent on favorable terms. The initiative comprises two components: the land-based "Silk Road Economic Belt" (SREB) and oceangoing "Maritime Silk Road" (MSR).

According to Yuri Rubinsky, a research fellow at the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, rising tensions with the US could be another factor that would trigger closer cooperation between the EU and China.

The US protectionism opposed by China and the EU could be a great stimulus for them to seek a compromise, the expert noted.

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the other day that Europeans can no longer count on the US as a reliable partner. Such statement is not an accident. Donald Trump threatens both China and Europe with protectionism in trade. Therefore, China and the EU are so to say in the same ‘boat.' Accordingly, Europeans are looking for support from China on the disputable issues they have with the United States," Rubinsky stated.

Earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for Europeans to take their fate into their own hands, practically implying that the EU should gradually become independent from Washington.

"The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over," Merkel told an election rally in Munich following US President Donald Trump's visit to Europe. "I've experienced that in the last few days; we Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands," the politician added.

Moreover, uncertainty over the fate of the TTIP free trade deal during Trump's presidency has prompted suggestions that the EU may ink a similar agreement with China instead of the US.