Amid Ukraine crisis, CEE aligns with EU, sees China as 'Russian ally'

Central and Eastern European governments (CEE) have decided to align with the European Union and the United States despite China's diligent efforts to strengthen ties with the bloc as Washington offered CEE countries meaningful security guarantees through NATO.

The inclination of CEE also came as a result of China's tacit response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, followed by threats and wicked strategies towards Taiwan.

"Instead of celebrating 10 years of cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, known as 16+1, in April 2022, the communist nation desperately dispatched its special representative for the forum on an eight-country tour to repair the relationship worsened by the war in Ukraine," said the vice president of the Romanian Institute for the Study of the Asia-Pacific (RISAP), Andreea Brinza as quoted by Nikkei Asia.

China's repeated attempts to strengthen CEE ties through the 16+1 have been long and tortuous as most CEE countries are now firmly aligned with the rest of the EU, the U.S., Japan, or even Taiwan except Hungary and Serbia.

The vice president of RISAP pointed out Beijing's numerous mistakes, the most crucial one being to ignore European Union concerns that the 16+1 mechanism was just a divide and conquer tactic to gain influence within the EU's less developed half.

China's biggest mistake of all was its obliviousness to CEE disillusionment and its slow distancing from Beijing, which began just as U.S.-China relations started to deteriorate in 2017, she said.

Moreover, its deliberate ignorance of how feared Russia was in the region and how important U.S. security were for CEE countries has resulted in them turning into staunch US allies.

Beijing also failed to honor its promises or implement them fast enough, with the Budapest-Belgrade railway project being a prime example.

CEE countries signaled their dissatisfaction towards China via project cancellations, critical statements, the arrest of a Huawei employee accused of spying, and the nurturing of stronger ties with Taiwan, while they signed memorandums of understanding targeting Huawei, and join the U.S. Clean Network, a U.S.-led effort to address long-term threats to data privacy, security, and human rights posed by authoritarian countries, Nikkei Asia reported.

The CEE countries are now actively strengthening ties with Taipei, ignoring China's protests and threats.

The 16+1 mechanism will never give China the broader regional influence it craves without a serious change in behavior and strategy. China's journey through Central and Eastern Europe was a long one, but instead of demonstrating long-term vision and strategy, it showcased how to lose a region in a 10-year span.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's support to Russia in opposition to the enlargement of NATO has given rise to a new order in Central and Eastern Europe, away from the Chinese dominance and expansionist policies and concerns the world about the reliability of the Asian giant as a partner which can be counted on.

( With inputs from ANI )

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