The East European Council became an official partner of the XXXII Eastern European Forum in Karpacz, which took place from September 5 to 7.
One of the most unexpected and resonant was the discussion “China’s influence on the countries of Eastern Europe”, which was moderated by the director of the East European Council Anton Naychuk, and arranged by very interesting speakers – the Senator of France, a member of the French delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Jean-Yves Leconte, Chinese experts Tuanze Zhang and Xi Zhang, representative of the academic circles of the University of Leipzig, Oleksiy Chigadaev.
The discussion made us think about many important conclusions:
– China will not join against the economic restrictions in relation to the Russian Federation, on the contrary, the Chinese side will use the difficult Russian geopolitical position to obtain even more affordable energy in the necessary volumes. However, we also should not overestimate the bilateral relations between China and Russia, which do not yet look like a full-fledged strategic alliance;
– Europe needs to form a clear strategy of actions in relation to China in order to take advantage of the interaction in its own economic interests;
– China’s peace plan has a deep diplomatic mission and political implications, but it is difficult to talk about the prospects for its implementation in the near future. With a high probability, this is understood in Beijing too.
The East European Council is grateful to the participants and plans to continue to develop a very complex, but at the same time important issue in future.