Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (China-CEE, China-CEEC, also 14+1; formerly 17+1 from 2019 to 2021 and 16+1 from 2021 to 2022) is an initiative by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to promote business and investment relations between

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and 14 countries of

Central and Eastern Europe Central and Eastern Europe is a term encompassing the countries in the Baltics, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe (mostly the Balkans), usually meaning former communist states from the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact in Europe. ...

(CEE, CEEC): Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Format

The format was founded in 2012 in Budapest to push for cooperation of the "16+1" (the 16 CEE countries and PRC). In 2019 at Dubrovnik Summit Greece joined the grouping, while in 2021 Lithuania left it. The 16+1 meet annually; summits were held in Dubrovnik (2019), Sofia (2018), Budapest (2017),

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

(2016),

Suzhou Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trade ...

(2015),

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

(2014), Bucharest (2013) and Warsaw (2012). The China-CEE secretariat is in Beijing, with 16 "national coordinators" in each of the partner CEE countries. The format's goals are to promote the Chinese

Belt and Road Initiative The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R), formerly known as One Belt One Road ( zh, link=no, 一带一路) or OBOR for short, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 150 ...

and enhance cooperation in the fields of infrastructure, transportation and logistics, trade and investment".
‘16+1’ mechanism set to bolster China-Europe ties
', on the china-ceec.org web (2018/07/10)
Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern Europe: Promising Start, Doubtful Outlook
', by Ágnes Szunomár, China-US Focus, December 6, 2017 These goals are supported by "growing ties in the areas of culture, education and tourism ... cultural exchanges, think tanks and NGOs."

Summit

Enlargement

Greece

In 2019 summit ( Dubrovnik), Greece, previously an observer, became a full member of the mechanism.

Withdrawals

Lithuania

In March 2021, the

Lithuanian National Radio and Television Lithuanian National Radio and Television ( Lithuanian: Lietuvos nacionalinis radijas ir televizija) is a non-profit public broadcaster that has been providing regular radio services since 1926 and television broadcasts since 1957. LRT joined Euro ...

(LRT) reported that in February, the

Lithuanian parliament The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas), or simply the Seimas (), is the unicameralism, unicameral parliament of Lithuania. The Seimas constitutes the legislative branch of government in Lithuania, enacting la ...

agreed to leave what was previously China's 17+1 format. Foreign minister

Gabrielius Landsbergis Gabrielius Landsbergis (born 7 January 1982 in Vilnius) is a Lithuanian politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 18th Government of the Republic of Lithuania led by the Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė. He is a Member of the Seimas for Ce ...

said the cooperation between Beijing and Lithuania has brought "almost no benefits". At the same time, it was also reported that Lithuania would open a trade representative office in Taiwan, formally known as the

Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...

(ROC), to boost unofficial relations with Taipei. The incident led to a diplomatic row with China and further trade disputes, including Chinese boycotts of Lithuanian components, dragging the European Union into the dispute. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda stated in January 2022 that it was a mistake in allowing Taiwan to open a representative office under the 'Taiwan' name, and that he was not consulted on the decision. Furthermore, a January 2022 poll commissioned by the

Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublikos užsienio reikalų ministerija) is a governmental body of the Republic of Lithuania that shapes the national policy, and organises, coordinates, and controls ...

found that a large majority of Lithuanian citizens are critical of current government policy towards China, leading to opposition figures calling for the repair of bilateral relations. A poll that was conducted soon after the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

showed that 20% of Lithuanian respondents viewed China very negatively and 44% rather negatively, indicating that the war may have had an impact.

Estonia and Latvia

On 11 August 2022, Estonia and Latvia stepped out of the format.

Infrastructure, investment and trade

This includes (as of 2017) Serbia's E763 Highway project, the

Budapest–Belgrade railway The Budapest–Belgrade railway connects the capital cities of Hungary and Serbia – the Budapest Keleti railway station with the new Belgrade Centre railway station. As a $2.89 billion, high-speed rail line project, the Budapest–Belgrade ra ...

and the China–Europe Land–Sea Express Route. In Croatia, a Chinese consortium led by China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) was contracted for the first phase of the construction of Pelješac Bridge and its access roads. In Poland, Chinese companies acquired

Huta Stalowa Wola Huta Stalowa Wola (HSW SA) is a defense contractor that operates a steel mill in the city of Stalowa Wola, Poland. It is a major producer of military equipment and one of the largest heavy construction machinery producers in East-Central Europe. ...

's civil engineering machinery division and Poland's PBF bearings. According to China Customs' statistics, China's trade volume with CEEC totaled $67.98 billion in 2017, a 15.9 percent increase compared to that of 2016. According to the

Chinese Ministry of Commerce The Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China (MOFCOM) is a cabinet-level executive agency of the State Council of China. It is responsible for formulating policy on foreign trade, export and import regulations, foreign direct i ...

, in 2016 China-CEE trade increased to $58.7 billion (from $43.9 billion in 2010), while its investment in CEE countries has accumulated to more than $8 billion, covering industries such as machinery, chemical, telecom and new energy.

Cultural links

All CEEC countries host at least one Confucius Institute, and some (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, and Romania) host multiple of them. From 2012 to 2017 six new direct flight routes between China and CEEC have been opened, the number of Chinese tourists visiting CEEC increased from 280,000 to 930,000, and the number of exchange students doubled as well. A ''China-CEEC Coordination Center for Cultural Cooperation'' was opened in North Macedonia. In China, the ''China-CEEC training center for young artists'' and ''China-CEEC Cultural and Creative Industries Exchanges and Cooperation Center'' were opened in the southwestern city of

Chengdu Chengdu (, ; Simplified Chinese characters, simplified Chinese: 成都; pinyin: ''Chéngdū''; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively Romanization of Chi ...

Reaction

Attributed as a ‘win–win’ cooperation for China, the countries involved, and the European Union (EU), Jeremy Garlick, a British assistant professor at the Prague University of Economics and Business, accused China as pursuing an assertive strategy of ‘

divide and conquer Divide and rule policy ( la, divide et impera), or divide and conquer, in politics and sociology is gaining and maintaining power divisively. Historically, this strategy was used in many different ways by empires seeking to expand their terr ...

’ tactics designed to benefit China at the EU's expense.

References

Publications

* Weiqing Song (eds.),''China's Relations with Central and Eastern Europe: From "Old Comrades" to New Partners'', Routledge, October 2017. * Anastas Vangeli, ''Central and Eastern Europe as a New Frontier of China's Multilateral Diplomacy'', Guest Editor: Dragan Pavlićević, ''Global China and Symbolic Power: The Case of 16 + 1 Cooperation'', Journal of Contemporary China, 11 April 11, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2018.1458056 * Anastas Vangeli, ''China's Engagement with the Sixteen Countries of Central, East and Southeast Europe under the Belt and Road Initiative'', 19 September 2017, https://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12216, in: China & World Economy, Volume 25, Issue 5, Special Issue: ''Eurasian Perspectives on China's Belt and Road Initiative'', September–October 2017, pp. 101–124. * Jean-Paul Larçon (eds.), ''The New Silk Road: China Meets Europe in the Baltic Sea Region – A Business Perspective'',

HEC Paris HEC Paris (french: École des hautes études commerciales de Paris) is a business school, and one of the most prestigious and selective grandes écoles, located in Jouy-en-Josas, France. HEC offers Master in Management, MSc International Fi ...

, France, World Scientific, July 2017 * Radu Sava, ''Romanian rhetoric on China's 16+1. Diffraction of politics and economics'' i
Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai 1/2019
pp. 132–155. *

Emilian Kavalski Emilian Kavalski is a Bulgarian-Australian political scientist and international relations scholar. He is the inauguraNAWA Chair Professor in thCentre for International Studies and Developmentat the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Si ...

,
China's "16+1" Is Dead? Long Live the "17+1."
', The Diplomat, March 29, 2019. *Ivana Karaskova,
Engaging China in 17+1: Time for the ACT Strategy
', The Diplomat, April 7, 2020. *Keegan Elmer,
Europe's '17+1' countries dissatisfied with China relations, report says, as summit is postponed
', South China Morning Post, April 7, 2020.

External links

* ''Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries'' official website **in English: **and Chinese: {{One Belt, One Road Foreign relations of China Chinese economic policy Eastern Europe