China's Engagement in Central and Eastern Europe: Regional Diplomacy in Pursuit of China's Interests

The nature of China's foreign engagementA leading experts on China, David Shambaugh, discusses the nature of the global engagement of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in his most recent book. In his view, Chinese diplomacy takes a kind of lowest-common-denominator approach in world affairs: it habitually takes the safest and least controversial position waiting first for other governments to reveal their position and only then revealing its own. There is a single exception to this rule - when China deals with an issue concerning its narrow self-interests, such as Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, human rights and China's maritime territorial claims.1Shambaugh views this approach as either being down to a conscious decision by China or its distinct inability to influence international affairs. In this, China is probably following the "maintaining a low profile in foreign relations" strategy that originated when China started modernizing under Deng Xiaoping. Alternatively, it could be expressing its discomfort and disagreement with what China defines as "power politics" and the "Cold War mentality," and/or it may lack the experience and confidence associated with its new global power role.Yet, we now see Chinese diplomacy contradicting this in Central and Eastern Europe and also in many other parts of the world. In 2012, China initiated a mechanism for regular communication and for enhanced cooperation with sixteen countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).2 China did not stop at offering CEE a new mechanism for partnership but has also become the major driver behind it. As noted by Justyna Szczudlik-Tatar, China first invited CEE countries to cooperate and then conceptualized the tools to facilitate the cooperation and established a secretariat under its foreign ministry to coordinate activities with CEE (The Twelve Measures plan, 2012). Later, it carefully listened to the views of partner countries on the usefulness of these tools and incorporated into its plan the activities to be organized in CEE and extended cooperation into other fields (The Bucharest guidelines, 2013). China, moreover, considered concerns emanating from the EU administration and framed this cooperation as being part of the EU-China partnership and in accordance with EU law (The Bucharest guidelines). China further reviewed its tools for cooperation with CEE countries, making them more specific and potentially useful for all the countries involved, aligning them to the EU-China 2020 Strategic Agenda (The Belgrade guidelines, 2014).3China's cooperation mechanisms with various regionsChina's policy towards the CEE stems from the regional diplomacy approach it started using in the mid-1990s and which now applies in relations with practically all the countries in the world, including those in Central and Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Under the fourth generation of China's leadership, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao (2003-2012), China further intensified its diplomatic ties with regions beyond China's closest neighborhood in order to boost the Chinese economy through exports and securing access to energy.4The oldest platform for China's cross-regional approach is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO; originally the Shanghai Five) initiated by China in 1996 to resolve border disputes and facilitate confidence-building. The SCO now has six members, including China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan; India and Pakistan will become full members in 2016. Today, the organization serves as a forum for facilitating trade, mainly in oil and gas, and for discussing security issues,5 particularly how to stop the spread of militant Islamists beyond Afghanistan and the radicalization of youth in the region. Multilateral negotiations between China, Russia and Kazakhstan resulted in the construction of pipelines from western Kazakhstan and eastern Siberia to China that were completed in 2009 and 2011, and is now building strategic land routes through which China can meet its energy needs. …