In a special Frankfurt edition titled BRI at 10: Bridging over Uncertain Times, Danilo Türk, former president of Slovenia, shared the details of one noteworthy bridge collaboration in Croatia. Why this bridge? Watch to find out.

Danilo Türk: I wanted to talk about the bridge. You know, last year a bridge was opened in the territory of Croatia between an island or a peninsula and the mainland, and that was an interesting example of cooperation. Because the bridge was built on the Croatian territory, the designer of the bridge was from Slovenia. It was largely financed by the European Union, mostly financed by the European Union, and the construction, the engineering, and the actual works were done by China. China has a very positive image in that regard because everybody was saying, "Look, the Chinese construction is the most advanced in the world today."

There was a time when Europe was in the lead in that regard. There was a time when the United States was in the lead, but now China is in the lead, and that's very good because when you have a big construction project, you consider cooperating with China.

And in that particular case, it went very well and gave another layer of a positive image that exists. And I think one has to build on specific examples, which, as you said, help the people. But of course, one has to do much more in every dimension.

Last week, I had a visit from a friend of mine, a teacher, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing. When he came to Ljubljana, he said, "I was surprised." He said, "that I see so many Chinese tourists, because there are very few European tourists in China nowadays." So, we have a need for a better balance in that regard also. And then we talked about the need to expand cooperation between universities and so forth. So what I'm saying is there are many niches, there are many areas where much more direct communication is possible.

That is the way to de-politicize the debate, to give these media stories a proper context and not get excited unnecessarily by media interpretations. People have to know, people have to experience, people have to feel cooperation.