China Keeps Betting on the Wrong Politicians

In the 2010s, many countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) were competing to become “China’s gateway to Europe.” Fast-forward to today, and nobody is trying to win that title. China lost the CEE region—not only because Beijing didn’t know how to properly manage its relations with the countries from the region, but, most important, because it built those relations largely on the backs of the leaders in power.

This contrasts with the traditional view of China’s diplomacy and way of building bilateral relations, which is supposed to emphasize a broad grooming of local elites that transcends domestic politics, enabling long-term influence even after shifts in power. In the CEE, however, it bet big on particular politicians—and the tumults of democracy largely knocked its favorites out of power.

For a long period, China’s strategy toward the CEE was to build very close ties with those politicians who had already shown a pro-Chinese stance. This approach had its zenith in the 2010s, soon after the establishment of a regional forum for cooperation with China, the 16+1 mechanism. But it also drew China into internal political debates in a region in which negative memories of communism are still raw and controversial. Now, the political landscape has changed to China’s disadvantage, and the recent election of Petr Pavel as the president of the Czech Republic is the latest shift in this direction.

In the 2010s, many countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) were competing to become “China’s gateway to Europe.” Fast-forward to today, and nobody is trying to win that title. China lost the CEE region—not only because Beijing didn’t know how to properly manage its relations with the countries from the region, but, most important, because it built those relations largely on the backs of the leaders in power.

This contrasts with the traditional view of China’s diplomacy and way of building bilateral relations, which is supposed to emphasize a broad grooming of local elites that transcends domestic politics, enabling long-term influence even after shifts in power. In the CEE, however, it bet big on particular politicians—and the tumults of democracy largely knocked its favorites out of power.

For a long period, China’s strategy toward the CEE was to build very close ties with those politicians who had already shown a pro-Chinese stance. This approach had its zenith in the 2010s, soon after the establishment of a regional forum for cooperation with China, the 16+1 mechanism. But it also drew China into internal political debates in a region in which negative memories of communism are still raw and controversial. Now, the political landscape has changed to China’s disadvantage, and the recent election of Petr Pavel as the president of the Czech Republic is the latest shift in this direction.

In the past decade, China had a close and loyal friend in Prague, in the person of former President Milos Zeman. While it also tried to win over a few other elites, it didn’t manage to gain broad appeal. Now that Zeman has reached his term limit, China finds itself without any friends in power left but with a country growing increasingly critical of Beijing.

Political falls, of course, can go both ways. Zeman used to be a very close friend of China, so close that in 2015 he appointed Chinese businessman Ye Jianming as his honorary advisor on China. Ye was the chairman of CEFC China Energy, a company that had become, in a short period of time, the main Chinese investor in the Czech Republic, while also dangling the promise of future investments. However, not only did many of these project proposals never materialize, but in 2018 Ye was arrested in China and accused of corruption.

But this little setback didn’t discourage Zeman from his support of China. Although he once criticized China for not delivering on its promises to the Czech Republic, he continued to keep the country’s seat warm within the then-17+1 summit and even circumvented the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Czech government in his personal relation with Beijing.

Zeman might have been a friend, but Czech society moved in the opposite political direction, with pro-Western voters and politicians associating China with Zeman and other politicians seen as corrupt or controversial. Zeman has now been replaced by former Gen. Petr Pavel, who said in 2018 that China, together with Russia, posed a greater threat to the security of the Czech Republic than terrorism. Pavel, a former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, wasted no time after his election before speaking, in a phone call, to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, as Taiwan has come to be seen in quite a few CEE countries as a friend and counterweight to Beijing. With the Czech government already taking a critical stance toward China, Beijing lost what it once considered a friendly capital in the region, one that Chinese President Xi Jinping visited in 2016.

The same pattern has repeated in countries such as Romania and Greece. In Bucharest, Victor Ponta’s tenure as prime minister (2012-2015) saw Romania-China relations experiencing their best moment since the fall of communism, as was the relationship between China and Ponta himself. According to a source familiar with the matter, Ponta encouraged strong but less institutionalized relations between his administration and China, sometimes circumventing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

China was happy with this arrangement as long as Ponta’s actions suited its interests. And Ponta seemed to deliver. During the then-16+1 summit in 2013 in Bucharest, Romania signed a series of agreements with China valued at around $8.7 billion. Ponta also participated in all of the 16+1 summits he could and publicly lobbied in favor of China whenever Beijing was mentioned in a discussion. But Ponta’s left-wing party, the Social Democratic Party, was seen by many in the public as corrupt and overly associated with the former ruling Communist Party. His prime ministerial career ended after massive protests following a tragic nightclub fire.

Once Ponta left, relations with China slowly started to deteriorate, only encountering a brief hiatus when another left-wing prime minister, Viorica Dancila, came to power. In the meantime, all the deals promoted in 2013 were abandoned, and after the emergence of tensions between the United States and China and then the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China largely found the door to high-level Romanian politics shut.

In Greece, meanwhile, Alexis Tsipras, prime minister from 2015 to 2019, was an enthusiastic backer of Beijing. In 2019, Tsipras, being among the few European leaders who participated at the second Belt and Road forum, envisioned Greece as a “bridge” between the West and East, being very eager to develop closer relations with China. The same year, Greece joined the then-16+1 mechanism, which then became the 17+1 mechanism. Back in 2016, shipping company COSCO bought a 67 percent stake in Pier I in the port of Piraeus, while in the same year Greece opted not to sign an EU joint statement regarding the South China Sea, taking the same position as Hungary.

After Tsipras left office, though, the new Greek government wasn’t so keen on engaging with China. For example, in 2021, Greece refused to host the 2022 17+1 summit, invoking a range of excuses, even though existing economic links, like the port of Piraeus, prevented a deeper break.

In the Czech Republic, like in Romania or Greece, China focused too much on relations with the leader in power and didn’t invest enough in diversifying its elite ties or public support. On the contrary, in the former communist countries of the CEE, it failed to understand that vast swaths of the population—and the political parties that represented them—would become critical of China if it was seen as too close to leaders with images tainted by populism, authoritarianism, or corruption.

The same thing happened even in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has at least continued to remain in power. The cozy ties between Orban and China, combined with allegations of corruption in some deals with China, expanded the opposition’s ire with Orban toward Beijing, too. For the moment, Orban and China have a symbiotic relationship. Orban uses his country’s good relations with China to leverage his influence inside the EU, while China uses Hungary to brag about its international successes and to maintain some European allies.

In nearby Serbia, the leader story is similar. From time to time, the Serbian government calls Xi a “brother,” President Aleksandar Vucic kisses the Chinese flag, or relations are described through the “iron-clad friends” narrative. Vucic’s bromance with Xi is well known within the CEE and was fruitful for the Serbian president, but in Serbia, like in Hungary, the opposition has started to criticize China’s presence in the country, and in the future there is a risk that China may have no friends in a region that used to seem full of them.

In the CEE region, Beijing’s relations with the leaders in power—who in many cases displayed authoritarian or corrupt practices—tainted China by association, transforming it from a diplomatic to a political subject. In this way, China has made itself into a target for pro-Western segments of the CEE—a majority in most countries.

In other regions of the world, China has been more successful, either by maintaining strong ties to authoritarian governments or by reaching out more broadly among political elites or establishing economic links that can withstand a change of government. But Beijing’s lack of interest in engaging with countries as a whole, in building institutional relations, and in courting public opinion in the CEE region suggests that China lacks a real understanding of how a democracy works and how to build long-lasting ties that go beyond a few China-friendly politicians. It also shows that instead of thinking long term, Beijing prefers easier short-term solutions, in the form of a few politicians it can trust who don’t take much hassle to attract.

Year by year, the political landscape in Central and Eastern Europe is changing, and so is China’s position in the region. From the 16 friends in the CEE region that it seemed to have in 2012, China risks being left one day with almost no country that it can call a friend.