The Belt and Road Initiative promoted by President Xi Jinping foresees the reactivation of a corridor with maritime and terrestrial commercial links between China and Europe, Germany being one of the important poles of this concept.

It has triggered, especially if the concept of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is taken into account, a global reflection on the role of economic links on the Asian-European land mass. It has also reaffirmed to the peoples of this area that economic collaboration from East to West has a long tradition, and over and above that has always been embedded in cultural cooperation.

Few people know that the term Silk Road was coined by Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877. He was a geographer from the commercially important city of Leipzig, crossed by one of the Salt Roads that have their European center in Halle, a city just 50 kilometers away. Indeed the name Halle relates to a Celtic and Greek language root for the term salt.