Tuesday

19th Mar 2024

China's 16+1 foray into Central and Eastern Europe

  • A Chinese New Year celebration in Prague. For Central Eastern European countries, the Chinese partnership is "a pragmatic question". (Photo: EUobserver)

Half a decade after it was launched, the network of cooperation between China and 16 Central and Eastern European countries has brought uneven economical and political fruits so far.

The so-called 16+1 was established in 2012 as Beijing's initiative to cover various issues such as investment, trade, but also culture or education.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

The group includes 11 EU countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia; and five non-EU countries from the Balkans: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.

It fits into China's global strategy to engage new partners in political and economic ties in different formats.

Despite having a permanent secretariat, the Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries - the initiative's official name - is more a series of bilateral relationships with no overall coherence, as experts pointed out in discussions at the Prague European Summit conference earlier this month.

"It's not really a multilateral format," Petr Kratochvil, the director of Prague's Institute of International Relations, told EUobserver.

"It's more a group of countries that China took to have bilateral ties with. It's mainly Poland and Hungary in terms of investment, and Romania and Serbia for building projects."

China's interest in the 16+1 countries is different from one country to another.

In the Czech Republic, Kratochvil noted, the Chinese have mainly invested in real estate, a football club - Slavia Prague, which just won the Czech championship - or the media.

"It's not really the kind of investment the country wants, because it doesn't produce anything," he said.

In Budapest, meanwhile, the government announced last week that Hungary and China would soon start to cooperate in the healthcare industry – from making medical equipment to developing biotechnologies.

Kratochvil noted that the amount of Chinese investments in the region had remained limited and was concentrated on a few high profile infrastructure projects, such as the Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway that Chinese companies plan to build.

The focus on infrastructure shows that China considers Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) a full part of the One Belt-One Road initiative – an investment and infrastructure plan, spanning from China to the Middle-East and Africa through to Central Asia.

"Southern and Eastern Europe are a testing ground for the Belt and Road," Anastas Vangeli, from the Polish Academy of Sciences, told EUobserver.

He said that 16+1 was more an "experiment" than a "Chinese plan", and that Beijing tries "to see whether this type of diplomacy can help them boost economic relations."

"To put it very simply, the whole idea is to find ways to boost the economy outside China, to generate demand for Chinese goods," Vangeli said, adding: "And these are not cheap goods: high speed railways, satellites systems or nuclear technology."

Agatha Kratz, from the European Council on Foreign Relations, a London-based think-tank, told EUobserver that: "The first idea was to treat CEE as Asia and Africa."

"That was a big shock, they explained that loans for projects that China would build were not going to happen."

For Kratz, the success of the 16+1 initiative is to be found on the political side than in the economic side.

She pointed out that annual summits between the 17 leaders, usually in Europe, constitute a "formal channel of communication".

A pragmatic question

After five years, the 16+1 format "has shown its limits, but it will continue," Kratz added.

For China, the forum is "high-level enough and it helps to understand how best to promote what it can do in Europe".

For CEE countries, the summits are "one more bilateral forum, one more way to have meetings with China and explain what they [CEE countries] need from it."

For countries that are either part of the EU or willing to join it in the future, the Chinese partnership is "a pragmatic question", Kratochvil insisted.

Although some leaders, such as Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban or Czech president Milos Zeman, are supportive of certain Chinese positions – for instance Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea – the region is not going to become a Chinese "ally".

"The idea of a strategic shift is nonsense," Kratochvil said.

EU-China united on climate, divided on trade

Within 24 hours of Trump announcing that the US will pull out of the Paris climate accord, EU and Chinese leaders presented a united front on fighting climate change. But divergence on trade plagues the new alliance.

Opinion

Why the EU doesn't get China's Belt and Road

It is not enough for European officials to simply tell the press that they do not understand the Belt and Road – the vision is clear enough, the point is to decide how to engage with it.

Chinese hangover in Prague

President Zeman says closer ties with China will finally free the Czechs from EU and US pressure. His allies and opponents are united in scepticism.

Hungary-Serbia railway launched at China summit

The flagship project of China's increased presence in central and eastern Europe was launched on Tuesday, following an EU probe as a summit in Budapest raises questions on Beijing's influence.

Analysis

Trump is 'gift' for China's EU agenda

The more harm Trump does to trans-Atlantic ties, the better for China's global interests, the author of a new study on Sino-European relations has said.

Opinion

Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers

The UN could launch an independent international investigation into Navalny's killing, akin to investigation I conducted on Jamal Khashoggi's assassination, or on Navalny's Novichok poisoning, in my role as special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, writes the secretary-general of Amnesty International.

Latest News

  1. Borrell: 'Israel provoking famine', urges more aid access
  2. Europol: Israel-Gaza galvanising Jihadist recruitment in Europe
  3. EU to agree Israeli-settler blacklist, Borrell says
  4. EU ministers keen to use Russian profits for Ukraine ammo
  5. Call to change EIB defence spending rules hits scepticism
  6. Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers
  7. EU summit, Gaza, Ukraine, reforms in focus this WEEK
  8. The present and future dystopia of political micro-targeting ads

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  2. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries
  3. European Citizen's InitiativeThe European Commission launches the ‘ImagineEU’ competition for secondary school students in the EU.
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste
  5. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  6. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us