China’s bid for international leadership in Central and Eastern Europe: role conflict and policy responses
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221082871 |
| Author | Weiqing Song,Rudolf Fürst |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221082871
International Relations
2024, Vol. 38(4) 541 –566
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00471178221082871
journals.sagepub.com/home/ire
China’s bid for international
leadership in Central and
Eastern Europe: role conflict
and policy responses
Weiqing Song
University of Macau
Rudolf Fürst
Institute of International Relations Prague
Abstract
China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) have intensified their cooperation
over the past decade or so. Despite some modest progress, this cooperation has performed
below the expectations of the CEECs in general, and, even more so, generated negative
feedback and implications more widely. This study is motivated by the puzzle over why there
are widening discrepancies between the two sides after initially positive expectations. Informed
by the role theory of international relations, this paper mainly argues that there is an intrarole
conflict between China’s perception of its international leadership role and the corresponding
role expectations of China held by the CEECs. This framework is empirically assessed on the
17 + 1 cooperation, through which China strives to forge a leadership role for itself in relation
to the CEECs. Amid generally low expectations of China’s leadership role, three general patterns
of responses can be identified among the CEECs, including those of dissenters, pragmatists,
and persisting partners. Furthermore, China’s leadership demands encountered challenges from
other players, particularly the European Union and the United States.
Keywords
17 + 1 platform, Central and Eastern Europe, China, international leadership, role conflict
Corresponding author:
Weiqing Song, Department of Government and Public Administration, Faculty of Social Sciences, University
of Macau, Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macao SAR, China.
Email: wqsong@um.edu.mo
1082871IRE0010.1177/00471178221082871International RelationsSong and Fürst
research-article2022
Article
542 International Relations 38(4)
Introduction
The tradition of relations between China and the Central and Eastern European Countries
(CEECs) is uniquely characterised by both familiarity and strangeness. The establish-
ment of official diplomatic relations between the two sides in the 1950s was motivated
by the Soviet-controlled communist bloc’s rapprochement with the People’s Republic of
China (PRC). The short-lived honeymoon soon reached its limits, with the Sino-Soviet
rift of around 1960. The two sides became psychologically distant over the succeeding
decades. Despite the historical links and regular contact through normal diplomacy and
institutions, China and the CEECs do not share substantial mutual understanding. On the
one hand, the two sides seem familiar to each other due to their shared ideological past,
whether this is regarded in a positive or negative sense. On the other, they have become
rather estranged since their divergent paths of domestic transformation in the post-Cold
War era. Indeed, the momentum of 1989/1990 generated a remarkable chasm between
the two sides, as the CEECs generally got rid of their communist systems, whereas China
has maintained its one-party rule until today. This divergence was further accentuated
with the accession of most CEECs to the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO).
As part of its rise on the world stage in recent years, however, China’s global ambi-
tions have reached Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), largely through the so-called
16 + 1 (or 17 + 1 since 2019, when Greece officially joined the forum) process. Officially
kicked off at the first 16 + 1 Summit in Warsaw, Poland in April 2012, this sub-regional
forum has been roughly institutionalised, primarily on China’s initiative. The CEECs
were highly motivated to cooperate in the beginning, but most have explicitly or implic-
itly revealed increasing disappointment with the actual developments over subsequent
years. Most recently, several states even identified China, with special reference to its
information technologies, as a potential security threat.1 The observation of this discord
in the relations between the CEECs and China sparked the research questions that this
paper addresses: What motivated China and the CEECs to construct this multilateral
forum? Why are there widening discrepancies between China and its CEEC partners in
their cooperation? How is there marked variation across the CEECs in their attitudes and
policies regarding China?
Since the start of the 16 + 1 process, the China–CEECs relationship has attracted
attention in policy and academic circles. Although some scholars have studied China’s
relations with individual CEECs, most of the research has focused on China’s relations
with the CEECs as a sub-region.2 Mainstream studies of the topic address the operation
and practicality of the China–CEECs cooperation and its outcomes, impacts and implica-
tions. Further on this topic, the literature provides conventional explanations from differ-
ent perspectives, including economic analyses of material factors, such as
complementarity, economies of scale and models of political economy,3 and liberal inter-
national relations (IR) analyses of normative aspects of economic relations, such as
human rights, democracy and regime types.4 Kavalski5 discusses the CEECs–China
interaction as roles mutually emerging through the region-making and community-mak-
ing activities of Beijing, which attempts to ‘position himself as the internationally
responsible and reliable actor’. Bartosz Kowalski6 regards the 16 + 1 as having been
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting