The Chinese Strategy of Cooperation With Central and Eastern Europe: Temporary Difficulties or the Prospect of Imminent Collapse?

In 2012 China and sixteen countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) established at the summit in Warsaw the new cooperation framework known as ‘16 +1’ Platform, ‘16+1’ Framework or ‘16+1’ Format which in 2022 celebrated its tenth anniversary (The sixteen member nations of the ‘16+1 Initiative’ are: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia). The aim of this article is to assess this paradigm of cooperation in terms of the goals and implemented strategies, considering international and regional conditions. The declared key goals of the Platform included: expanding China’s cooperation with CEE countries to increase investment and trade to improve the development of the CEE region and strengthen mutual economic ties. With time, the platform was largely seen as a ‘gateway to Europe’ for its flagship foreign policy initiative, the Belt and Road (BRI). In 2019, after the acceptance of Greece’s application (H. Ciurtin, The ‘16+1’ Becomes the ‘17+1’: Greece Joins China’s Dwindling Cooperation Framework in CEE, http://lt.china-office.gov.cn/eng/en/201807/ t20180731_2676625.htm), the number of countries participating in the platform expanded to seventeen. However, in the following period different crises appeared. This included the first Lithuanian withdrawal (May 2021) from cooperation and then Estonian and Latvian (August 2022). The platform, which was once called the 17 + 1, now has fourteen members plus China. Overtime, the key problem of the Chinese strategy was it failed to resolve structural deficiencies ensuring its institutional survival. Combined with the consequences of the COVID19 pandemic and first the recognition of the primacy of the competences of the European Commission in coordinating cooperation with China by the participating EU Member States, ultimately ended the prospects for the cooperation paradigm that was adopted in 2012. While based on IR-theory, the main aim of this article is to provide an overview of the development as well as the current state of affairs of the cooperation between China and the CEE countries.