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Rail freight accommodates Europe in China's Belt and Road Initiative
Because "Belt and Road", China's global transport infrastructure scheme, is supposed to impact the world in a big way, Beijing is determined to maintain a high level of excitement about the project.
Enthusiasm is essential to such campaigns, and this is no less true of Belt and Road. It is not enough to be interested - one must be "excited".
To add colour and international flavour Belt and Road is based on Marco Polo's Old Silk Road, that ran between 800-900 AD, when it was little more than a packhorse trail from China to Europe, carrying hugely expensive spices and silks that thrilled in the still barbarous lands of medieval Europe. Even humble Chinese noodles fetched astronomical prices back then.
And while there are African and South Sea dimensions to today's Belt and Road scheme, these are mere side shows to what is essentially an Asia-Europe project. 
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For eastern Europe, China talks a good line, but fails to deliver the goods
China talks a good line in central and eastern Europe, but fails to deliver on promises, says Richard Turcsanyi, deputy director at Institute of Asian Studies at Bratislava, Slovakia, and assistant professor at Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic.
Speaking to a select group at Hong Kong University, Dr Turcsanyi traced the history of Chinese relations and their current status with the ex-communist 16+1 group, which includes China as the one, and Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Macedonia as the 16.
The 16 are now part the Central Eastern European (CEE) bloc within the capitalist European Union and under umbrella of NATO military alliance, which includes the US and Canada.
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Sino-European relations: Profitable, could be more so, and yet fraught with tensions
Given that the European Union is moving away from being a simple trading bloc and acting more like a sovereign state, it now seeks to attach trendy social strings to trade deals as Canada tried to do last year - much to its cost.
The issue today is whether Europe will accord China Market Economy (ME) status. Whether the EU decides to back the bid, it would be best to avoid the harsh snub Canada suffered for laying down conditions China was not likely to meet. Europeans hoping to become politically cozy with China say Yes, and those fearing economic harm that might befall Europe, say No. With the nay-sayers, the United States agrees.
They see Beijing enhancing the role of powerful state-owned enterprises, which has the economy moving away from free-markets, not closer. So the yea-sayers have very little on their side except the hope that going along to get along with China will pay dividends in mutually "civilisational" terms some day soon.
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As for Brexit's final outcome, the only sure thing is uncertainty
As Britain's exit from the European Union reaches its intermediate stage, all continue to ask the unanswerable question: Will Brexit, the UK's divorce from the EU, be good or bad for Britain and Europe. Partisans on both sides have their own answers based on their very different hopes and fears.
Even the intermediate stage has proven to be uncertain. It's still not clear what the UK's relationship with the European Union will look like after March 2019, when it is supposed to become independent, let alone in 2021 when the country severs its last vestiges of EU membership.
As always the answer to Europe's most frequently ask question will likely be "que sera sera" - whatever will be, will be. And more definitive answers will arise from post-Brexit experience, based conditions of day well after the divorce itself.
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