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Chapter Six - Conclusions
Conclusion
6.1 Cooperation between China and CEEC’s role in cross-regional relationship
First, the 16+1 cooperation should be defined as an ongoing process, with Participants that are conducting cooperation within it on a voluntary basis. It also means it should be seen not as a set of bilateral relationships, nor a platform constituting a part of China – EU relationship, but kind of a dual-track approach that aims at enhancing of existing and searching for new areas of cooperation, only within respective rules and regulations of each Participant. The thee level analysis presented in previous chapters shown, that from its pragmatic side the first 8 years 16+1 process did not mature to the desired form, emphasized among others in 2016 with the issuance of the Riga Guidelines. This view seems to be ignored with more constructivist and institutionalist approaches, which dominate the Chinese views on that platform. Such misinterpretations increase the perceiving of shared elements within overall EU-China relations. As reflected in a few of guidelines for China-CEEC cooperation, these doings are directed towards implementation of “China-EU partnership of peace, reform, growth and civilization” introduced into Chinese foreign policy in this decade. This approach misinterprets the voluntary and supportive character of the discussed platform, and leads to many conflicting assessments and misconceptions of its role, including strategic enhancement level in case of the region, limiting the pragmatic deliverables. It can be also regarded as the test field of some of the other sub-regional practices re-applied from the cooperation of China with developing countries and regions like i.e. Africa. The platform that tries to utilize what Chinese leadership sometimes calls an “innovative policy approach”, with a high degree of certainty increases its presence in Europe. So far, stated limited deliverables of that cooperation have underlined several gaps in regional assessments, impacting diversified identification of individual Participants and their enthusiasm, but also the existence of several misconceptions from the Chinese perspective, including conditions defining the region, based on historical and geographical determinants.
Second, as pointed during this research, 16+1 is considered by its “frontrunners” as a set of 16 bilateral relationships of CEEC’s with China, utilizing selective inclusions of deliverables purely bilateral in nature, and in many cases not related to the 16+1 mechanism.
The scope of some of the documents may also suggest, that they are a result of long
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negotiation processes, especially in case of agricultural trade, listed as an important trading area in annual Guidelines. Furthermore, it can be argued that some of such deliverables are provided for the Summits intentionally, to be presented within the framework underlining the success nature of the mechanism. There are however few casual empirical evidences of any relevance to these deliverables being the result of presence of the mechanism.
Third, it has been also underlined that there is no correlation between 16+1 cooperation and an increase in trade, including the negative correlations that could be associated with the enhancement of connectivity links, delivering results opposite to those expected on the European side of the stated relationship. The growing deficit within the overall EU market also points, that the arguments of co-shared trade benefits from other regional countries acting as manufacturing hubs in EU chains of supply are also disputable.
The situation is slightly different in the case of investments. In this regard there are some evidence of a positive correlation between political attitudes and investment presence, that are associated with political support from the Chinese side. Stated conditionality however underlines a negative impact of the 16+1 cooperation, where pragmatic business-driven deliverables tend to be highly politicized, enhancing sub-regional competitiveness, and therefore projecting the negative impact on overall, China-EU relationship. Overall investment stock, which is usually used to validate the successfulness of the cooperation, does not indicate the differences in sizes of particular economies, which in case of large economies like Poland being one of the top investment beneficiaries compared to overall stock is very limited.
From the neo-functional point of view, the drive for institutionalization of the sub-regional cooperation is fragmented, and at the current stage should not be regarded as successful. It is of course difficult to establish the general regional scope, but even from the multi-bilateral perspective, it shows limited deliverables, which naturally should limit the enthusiasm of individual countries utilizing the China-CEEC process.
Fourth, from a cross-regional perspective, there are many connecting points of China-EU strategic relationship reflected in the 16+1 cooperation. Based on analysis of 16+1 cooperation guidelines and strategic documents from the EU (and partially from China), these elements are full of partial complementarity. There are also dozens of exchange mechanisms created under the framework of China-EU cooperation, which is being duplicated by the similar sub-regional platforms of cooperation within the CEE region. This is one of that arguments evident in the EU, pointing to the implementation of divide and rule strategy,
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especially based on the argument of upholding political and economic cooperation without presence of all EU MS. It is however important to note, that this shared element can be connected with the lack of internal trust in a cross-regional relationship and within the European region itself, which results in attempts to include additional assurances of complementarity between China regional presence and intra-European development efforts.
The above rationale generates additional negative results, which instead of enhancing cross-regional trust and application of rules and norms increase disparities between different stakeholders of the discussed partnerships. Stated comparative analysis in Chapter 5. points to the complementarity of objectives embodied in EU-China Agenda 2020 or joint statements from the EU-China Summits to the Guidelines of 16+1 Summit. However, conducting such an analysis has rather casual relevance as a pragmatic assessment of cooperation objectives coherence, since the same administrations contributing to one-third of the EU member states are also constituting to two-thirds of the Participants of the 16+1 cooperation. It is one of the least recognized elements within Chinese political leadership, but also its scientific circles, that the EU, even though being an active observer of the process is not an external party to the 16+1 cooperation but its integral part. Lack of recognition of that argument has been also underlined by the offers of CPC leadership to invite other EU countries to join the trilateral cooperation with the CEEC’s. It therefore should be seen as a support platform, which naturally needs to be well aligned with the overall cross-regional relationship, especially due to intensions of remaining 5 CEEC’s to join the EU. According to conducted analysis, this could be the main factor resulting in political frictions and limited deliverables impacting the creation of sub-regional interdependences.
Five, the existing structure of economic interdependence can underline another aspect of 16+1. The process is intended to act as a platform for promoting balanced regional development. As communicated during visits of Chinese premier Li Keqiang in Europe, the Chinese side rationale is that it addresses the development gaps within Europe, helping in European integration. That approach, based on conducted analysis if claimed to act in a supportive role, is concentrated mostly in the Southern parts of CEE region where the less wealthy and less developed countries are located, and due to past military conflict in the Balkan region lacks in infrastructure and industrial capacity. It is not easy to determine yet if there is any impact the 16+1 mechanism in this area of cooperation. As pointed in the part discussing the investments of China in CEEC’s, there are many evidences underlining the links
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between high levels of political relationships with the Chinese leadership and increased overall investment stock.
The idea of enhancement of balanced growth in the European continent however utilizes the internal disproportions already present in certain sub-groupings, such as the Baltic States, V4 countries and Balkan regions. The pragmatic dimension of Chinese presence in that region, with non-aligned (with the EU) financial tools additionally disrupts the natural (neo-functionalism based) integrations processes, especially in non-EU member states, where extensive debts can distance the regional integration in a long-term perspective. Most of the investments referred to in this research are located outside or at the peripheries of the EU. It is among most strongly emphasized elements behind limited evidence of shortage in deliverables. The Chinese model of development through investment, that work well in regions like Africa does not work properly in the CEE region. Analysis of the political rationale of CPC behind that implementation can also be associated with “forcible” creation of CEE region according to Chinese perceptions, where in some cases there are no shared elements of any common sub-regional identity (i.e. between overall objectives of North Macedonia and Estonia). The faulty historical rationale background, ignoring the tremendous changes that many of CEEC’s being EU MS undergone in past 30 years also created a further systemic gap between the two (seventeen) sub-regional partners. It can be claimed, that the platform “put forward by China has been constructed on the basis of the national conditions of the 17 states and concrete requirements from these countries” (CASS 2017). The board analysis was undertaken so far by several scholar communities and this author point with multiple empirical evidence, that the mechanism does not match these conditions, and “Chinese characteristics” is associated with participation in that cooperation mechanism are limited to few political relationships, that do not contribute to creation shared regional identity and strong drive for further institutionalization.
Finally, an element that intensified connectivity cooperation within CEE region is the BRI. 2017 marked the year when all countries joined this Chinese-led initiative, where 16+1 is regarded as an important contributor to “bridging Europe and Asia”. In the case of synergies between the two platforms however, the majority of connectivity projects are in fact included in the cross-European level of EU-China Connectivity Platform232, and the roots of
Trans-232“EU-China Summit: Rebalancing the strategic partnership”, EC, April 9, 2019.
https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/international/news/2019-04-09-eu-china-summit_en.
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European Transport Network233. Stated projects must follow the EU rules and regulations, especially in case of bidding processes, which by default are not compatible with most commonly offered PRC investment models of “lend-and-build” type of investments. Some changes in this regard could be seen with examples like Croatian Bridge constructions, which may become the first completed Chinese infrastructural project in EU and CEEC, after the failed investment in Poland in 2011234. 16+1 became a regular platform of high-level consultation, which may be utilized to progress on BRI initiative. As discussed in Chapter 3., there are no evidence (or shared agreement) among the 16 Participants stating that 16+1 is regarded as an element of BRI. The China-CEEC’s secretariats for cooperation areas related to BRI like maritime cooperation in Poland or logistics in Latvia also do not present such a practical form of dual-platform approach. As stated during previous parts related to Chinse rationale behind the BRI, the initiative goes far beyond connectivity as well as other usual elements understood as a contributor to economic interdependence. Among them, soft elements of infrastructure can be mentioned including the people-to-people exchanges and knowledge sharing. These elements however point to change in the elements of theoretical and political landscape.
Among the few successful aspects of the cooperation mechanism are the areas of local and people-to-people cooperation that enhanced the levels and scale of cooperation as well as a number of mutual visits. As a platform of multilateral engagement opportunities it provides multilevel mechanisms of exchange, that allows for the building of common understanding, resulting in better bilateral involvement of local and provincial governments.
It is important to underline, that China has decreasing levels of regional autonomy, which makes this level a more pragmatic dimension for achieving deliverables. It also allows to search for sectorial and area-specific objectives, but so in that case there are no evidence of sub-region wide drive for cooperation, that may be connected with yet non-existing common regional identity. Links to identity can be noticed within several regional sub-groupings like Western Balkans, Baltic States, V4 countries, or these connected with bodies of water, like Baltic, Black and Adriatic Sea’s. This several fragmented identities however once more lead to increase in sub-regional competitiveness, which so far shown a little drive for 16+1 associated regionalism and institutionalization. In practice, the mechanism concentrates on cooperation
233 “Infrastructure - TEN-T - Connecting Europe”, EC. https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/infrastructure_en.
234 J. Cienski, “Poland to China: you’re fired”, Financial Times, 2011. https://www.ft.com/content/77f1d8c3-d258-3760-b035-6edee87cb6c2.
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in areas bordering with the EU, which pushes some of the Participants in a position of increase in political costs of 16+1 exchanges within the European Community.
6.2 Cooperation between China and CEEC’s role in contemporary international