In 2012 China and
sixteen countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) established at the summit
in Warsaw the new cooperation framework known as ‘16 +1’ Platform, ‘16+1’
Framework or ‘16+1’ Format which in 2022 celebrated its tenth anniversary (The
sixteen member nations of the ‘16+1 Initiative’ are: Albania, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and
Slovenia). The aim of this article is to assess this paradigm of cooperation in
terms of the goals and implemented strategies, considering international and
regional conditions. The declared key goals of the Platform included: expanding
China’s cooperation with CEE countries to increase investment and trade to
improve the development of the CEE region and strengthen mutual economic ties.
With time, the platform was largely seen as a ‘gateway to Europe’ for its
flagship foreign policy initiative, the Belt and Road (BRI). In 2019, after the
acceptance of Greece’s application (H. Ciurtin, The ‘16+1’ Becomes the ‘17+1’:
Greece Joins China’s Dwindling Cooperation Framework in CEE,
http://lt.china-office.gov.cn/eng/en/201807/ t20180731_2676625.htm), the number
of countries participating in the platform expanded to seventeen. However, in
the following period different crises appeared. This included the first
Lithuanian withdrawal (May 2021) from cooperation and then Estonian and Latvian
(August 2022). The platform, which was once called the 17 + 1, now has fourteen
members plus China. Overtime, the key problem of the Chinese strategy was it
failed to resolve structural deficiencies ensuring its institutional survival.
Combined with the consequences of the COVID19 pandemic and first the
recognition of the primacy of the competences of the European Commission in
coordinating cooperation with China by the participating EU Member States,
ultimately ended the prospects for the cooperation paradigm that was adopted in
2012. While based on IR-theory, the main aim of this article is to provide an
overview of the development as well as the current state of affairs of the
cooperation between China and the CEE countries.