Is China Out the Window in the CEE?

The Illiberal Alternative

At the same time, the governments of countries such as Serbia and Hungary have used the pandemic as an opportunity to entrench authoritarian rule under the guise of emergency health measures. For these countries, China has provided a much-needed ideational alternative for the narrative framing of their independence from EU demands that they abide by the rule of law.

One of the first acts under the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, as the prime minister acquired new emergency powers amidst the pandemic, was to ensure that the details of the Budapest-Belgrade railway, a costly 2 billion euro project with Chinese financing, were kept classified. The fact that the project, which many have criticized as wasteful and corrupt, had nothing to do with the health crisis was brushed aside by parliamentary members from Orban’s ruling Fidesz party. In similar fashion, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić stated in the early stages of the pandemic: “European solidarity does not exist. That was a fairy tale on paper. I have sent a special letter to the only ones who can help, and that is China.” As a result, the EU singled out Serbia and Hungary in its criticism of pandemic disinformation form China.

It seems that Chinese observers are also aware of this split among CEE countries. A Chinese report in December 2019 on investment in Central and Eastern Europe assessing political risk acknowledged that apart from Hungary and Serbia, the other CEE countries are not ideal targets for investment. The image of China has thus been drawn into domestic political debates about the national image that each of the CEE states wants to project. In this respect, it is not what China does (or intends to do), but how its agency has been localized domestically that frames CEE perceptions of Beijing.

Localizing China Policy in the CEE countries

It needs to be stated at the outset that China is not merely a newcomer in the CEE region, but that both Asia and China have been far too distant geographically, historically, and ideationally to have meaningful resonance in the political, cultural, and (until very recently) economic imaginations of the CEE countries. Even during the Cold War, most of the CEE states sided with Moscow during the Sino-Soviet split. As a result, these countries had little to no contact with China during the communist period, a fact that continues to impact relationships with China even as Beijing has been keen to exploit an imagined shared past, as evidenced by a string of 70^th anniversary diplomatic events in 2019 (counting back to the establishment of relations between the new PRC and former Eastern Bloc countries in 1949). In fact, mutual disinterest informed the better part of the first two decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In this respect, it is China’s attention to the CEE region in 2012 that has very much set the stage for its localization, referring in this context to the ways in which images and representations of an external other are internalized in the domestic discourse. China appears to have provided unique opportunities for creative foreign policy entrepreneurship, much of it around what the author has elsewhere termed “identity geopolitics.” Almost three decades after the end of the Cold War, China emerged for some CEE politicians as an alternative pivot for foreign policy.

Traditionally, the outlook of the CEE states has been subject to a complex triangulation between the USA (NATO), the EU, and Russia. In this respect, Beijing has offered an opportunity in recent years to upset the triangle in the articulation of international identities and interests in the CEE region. In this sense, China has become increasingly “local” as representations of China are adopted, adapted, and variously appropriated to fit the domestic political narratives of CEE states. Such localization appears to be the established pattern in many CEE countries when they interact with external actors. In other words, debates about others countries, such as the US, China or Russia, do not necessarily unfold on the basis of what these countries actually do, but on how these actors are perceived to fit the ideological commitments of different domestic political parties. In the case of Russia, for example, the division between “Russophobe” and “Russophile” camps in CEE countries generally reflects whether a political party or interest is descended from the former communist party or the anti-communist opposition.

Attitudes toward China follow a similar pattern. As a rule, governing parties have been more pragmatic and have tended to favour closer economic relations with China, while opposition parties and politicians have criticized instances of bonhomie with Beijing. In the cases of Prague’s severing of sister-city ties with Beijing and the Taiwanese trip of the Czech Senate president, for example, the political rifts – while perhaps exacerbated by China’s actions – are a reflection of domestic opposition politics. In both cases, representatives of the opposition have opted for what critics in China choose to call “China bashing” in order to score political points against the current Czech President and others who have been accused of cosying up to Beijing. Critics in the opposition often infer a slide toward illiberal politics and corruption from closeness with Beijing, their suspicions urged along by very real cases that raise questions about links between China and political and business elites. One prominent recent case in the Czech Republic concerned Petr Kellner, owner of the domestic credit company Home Credit, who was found in late 2019 to have paid a public relations firm to place articles favorable to China in local media.

The Coming Age of Decoupling

Like the rest of Europe, the majority of CEE countries have grown increasingly wary of China, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. For some, such as Poland and Bulgaria, this shift has been accelerated by the escalating conflict between the US and China, particularly over technology and security – what has been termed a “technology Cold War” between Washington and Beijing. In particular, the US has used the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) – covering the “Three Seas Region” comprising 12 EU states, chiefly from the CEE region and also members of China’s “17+1” grouping – to garner support for the so-called “Clean Network” initiative, which Chinese diplomats have panned as discriminatory and in fact a “dirty network.” Central to US concerns over Chinese technology has of course been the tech giant Huawei. As a result, all of the EU member states taking part in the “17+1” platform have indicated to date that they will be banning Huawei equipment from the construction of their 5G networks.

Huawei has fought back against bans in several CEE countries, including Poland and Romania, challenging their legality under EU law. China has stressed that these countries have succumbed to US pressure in issuing these bans. But this is in fact an overly simplistic explanation of such decisions, which have been based on real security concerns. In the case of Poland, for example, restrictions were prompted by a case of espionage against Huawei’s country director, who had previously worked as a Chinese diplomat in Poland. Media in Slovakia have also signalled concern over the security threats posed by Chinese telecommunication companies.

In the Czech Republic, as in other countries, concerns over China have been deepened by the aggressive conduct of Chinese diplomats. In December 2018, a bitter spat broke out between Czech Prime Andrej Babiš and Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jianmin after the latter claimed in a statement on Facebook that Babiš had privately admitted that a security warning about Huawei issued by the country’s cybersecurity agency had been misguided. Babiš flatly denied this, calling Zhang a “liar.” This was an earlier example of what would subsequently, in 2019, come to be known as “wolf-warrior diplomacy,” a more aggressive approach by Chinese diplomats through Facebook and Twitter that would only deepen threat perceptions in the CEE region and right across Europe.

In the second half of 2019, almost all Chinese embassies in the CEE region established both Facebook and Twitter accounts. The aim of these accounts was to actively promote the official Chinese view of developments in Hong Kong. As the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, and China faced global criticism for its handling of the initial stages, this diplomatic activism through social media went into overdrive. Chinese embassies across the region posted actively about the medical “aid” provided to CEE countries – much of it in fact trade, not aid. One study from the European Think-tank Network on China (ETNC) released in April noted of the case of Hungary that "[it] is conspicuous that the text of official communiques of the Hungarian government, and thus most of the media coverage never used the verbs 'to buy' or 'to purchase' when it comes to medical equipment coming from China, and prices are never mentioned either."

Meanwhile, senior diplomats like Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian attacked the US for its response, even suggesting that the virus might have originated there. As some scholars have noted, the content of this activism across social networks was not actually directed at domestic audiences in the CEE region or other EU countries, but rather audiences back home in China. As such, China’s “mask diplomacy” backfired in the sense that it confirmed the growing suspicion among CEE countries that Beijing “does not get” the region.

It is not surprising, given the abovementioned factors, that CEE countries have been at the forefront in Europe when it comes to decoupling from China. Consider the way, for example, that Bulgaria has proposed, in the wake of the pandemic and in the interests of EU solidarity and security, that a “small EU China” be created by relocating critical medical production now dependent upon China to CEE countries. Or how Romania revealed in May 2020 that it had cancelled a deal with a Chinese company to upgrade a nuclear power plant in the country, what had been one of the largest BRI investments in the region. Four months later, adding insult to injury, Romania announced that the contract would be pursued with help from the US, which is now committing eight billion dollars to the project.

Links with China, previously touted as a force for good and for “mutual benefit,” are now likely to be viewed as instances of over-dependence on Beijing, a sign of shifting tides in Central and Eastern Europe.

What Next?

But even as China-CEE relations cool off, it must be recognized that this reveals a more fundamental shift in attitudes in the region – demonstrating the willingness of CEE states to simultaneously challenge both China and the EU, albeit in different ways. On the one hand, a number of CEE countries appear prepared to challenge China’s red lines, including core issues such as Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang. All of these form the core of the “One China” principle, which Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed again during his August trip to Europe. On the other hand, CEE states are pushing the self-avowedly “geopolitical” European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen to start acting showing real assertiveness – walking the walk rather than just talking the talk. In this process, the CEE states have also sought to break the Franco-German dominance over the EU’s China policy and stake their own claim on the China agenda setting.

In this respect, Prague’s severing of sister-city relations with Beijing is a reminder that the “One China” principle has ramifications far beyond the status of Taiwan. As the former Danish Prime Minister and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen argued recently in Die Zeit, the government in Beijing has aggressively been pushing a “revisionist” version of the “One China” principle, in which any relations by other states with Taiwan are viewed unfavorably, and the leadership in Beijing is “almost completely immune to criticism from abroad.” Chinese leaders have used this version of the “One China” principle, said Rasmussen, to justify abrogating its commitments to Hong Kong under the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement, and to defend the extensive repression of ethnic and religious minorities. Seen against this geopolitical backdrop, the active process of distancing from China in CEE states is meant to prod Brussels into action. “If Europe truly wants to be a geopolitical actor, it can no longer cultivate its relationship with Taiwan using the ‘fly under the radar’ approach,” Rasmussen wrote.

Historically speaking, each of Prague’s defenestrations have proven painful and tumultuous for all parties involved. The present tossing of China out the window in the foreign policy actions of various states in Central and Eastern Europe does not promise to be any different. It is part of a difficult but necessary reconfiguration of relationships, hopefully that can produce in sum more cooperative and equitable relations with China. For the time being, however, such an outcome is but a wishful thinking. Entrenched in their own positions, it seems that resentment and division are becoming the main characteristics of the interactions between Beijing and European capitals. For Europe at least, the current disenchantment with China in the CEE region is paradoxically helping the EU regain a consolidated “European voice” in its relations with Beijing. The uncertainty of this situation makes it difficult to anticipate what the future might hold, but it seems that confrontation rather than cooperation will remain the motif of Sino-European relations for some time to come.