Time to upgrade cooperation with CEE nations

The Leaders' Summit of China and Central and Eastern European Countries will be held online on Feb 9. The 9th summit was originally scheduled to be held in Beijing in 2020 but was deferred due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The past summits have yielded fruitful results in various fields, with the most important being the promotion the upgrading of the "17+1" (17 Central and Eastern European countries plus China) framework cooperation.

Central and Eastern Europe is a new economic region that evolved from the former geographical region of Eastern Europe, which had a total of 13 countries in 2006. The relationship between China and the CEE countries can be divided into two stages: the pre-2012 period for repairing ties and establishing principles, and the post-2012 period for promoting comprehensive and in-depth development of overall China-CEEC as well as bilateral relations.

During the turbulent 1990-94 period of sociopolitical upheaval and national restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe, China's relations with the CEE countries needed to be restored and improved.

After former president Jiang Zemin visited Hungary in 1995 and former president Hu Jintao visited Poland, Hungary and Romania in 2004, China and the CEE countries agreed on the principles for developing all-round cooperation in various fields on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and win-win results. Guided by these principles, bilateral relations between China and CEE countries have made considerable progress. But China's ties with the CEE countries were basically on bilateral levels before 2012 and there was no framework for overall cooperation between China and the CEE countries as a whole.

In April 2012, the first Leaders' Summit of China and Central and Eastern European Countries was held in Poland, which established the "16+1" cooperation framework. Under this framework, the CEE countries not only came under one umbrella but also their geographical area was extended with the inclusion of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were earlier part of the Soviet Union. All bilateral and multilateral cooperation between China and the CEE countries is now carried out under this framework.

Since the 5th China-CEEC summit in Latvia in November 2016, the European Union, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Belarus and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, in addition to China and original 16 CEE countries, have attended the meeting as observers, extending the China-CEEC cooperation mechanism to other areas.

And after Greece officially joined the China-CEEC cooperation platform at the 8th leaders' summit in Croatia in 2019, the "16+1" framework became "17+1", extending the platform to deeper into Southern Europe.

Thanks to the constant upgrading of the cooperative framework, the scope of China-CEE cooperation has been expanding. Twelve of the 17 CEE countries are also EU members, and Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro could soon join the European economic bloc. But since these countries may be worried about their EU membership and EU rules when dealing with China, their cooperation with China could be affected to some extent.

In fact, China-CEEC cooperation is showing less and less Central and Eastern European features, and more and more features distinctive to the Europe. The EU has participated in the "17+1" cooperative framework as an observer, and at the end of December, China and the EU wrapped up the negotiations on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment after seven years.

Given the major changes in the scope, degree and modalities of cooperation, China and the CEE countries need to revise and upgrade the cooperation principles to meet the demands of the new situation. The fact that China is the first country to recover from the pandemic and has wrapped up of the China-EU investment agreement negotiations has dealt a blow to unilateralism and trade protectionism which the Donald Trump administration resorted to creating the right conditions for upgrading the China-CEEC cooperation framework.

Hopefully, China will deepen its connection with Europe through a revised and upgraded China-CEEC cooperation framework, and the world as a whole through the Belt and Road Initiative, so as to promote free trade, boost development, maintain world peace and build a community with a shared future for mankind.

Yet we should not forget that Central and Eastern Europe is a region with diversities, differences and complex internal and external relations. Heavily influenced by the European and American values and norms, some CEE countries prefer to side with the US when push comes to shoves. Which makes it all the more important to urgently upgrade the China-CEEC cooperation framework.

The author is a professor at the School of International Studies, Peking University.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.