After his 2007 visit of China, Slovakia’s then Prime Minister Fico returned with a notion of China becoming a new source of investment and a new market for Slovak exports. Fico’s dreams of doing business with China have echoed throughout Slovak policy circles ever since. Much of the Slovak desire to do business with China… Continue reading Pitfalls of Slovakia’s Chinese dreams
When tanks of the Warsaw Pact countries rolled into Czechoslovakia in the early hours of August 21, 1968, the hopes for building „communism with a human face“ were mercilessly crashed. After the suppression of the Hungarian uprising more than ten years before, the Soviet Union once again proved determination to counter any centrifugal forces within… Continue reading Ideology and geopolitics: Chinese reaction to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia
In July, the EU-China relations have undergone the annual flurry of summitry. First, on July 6-7 the meeting of the leaders of the members of the 16+1 cooperation mechanism grouping China and 16 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries was held in Sofia, Bulgaria. This was the seventh 16+1 summit. It was followed by the… Continue reading Chinese Media Watch: 16+1 & EU-China Summit
As Europe is waking up to the Chinese party-state’s growing influence inside its territory, China experts in Europe need to make themselves heard. “So what are the European data on this? Should we worry? And how much?,” a European journalist hoping to address China’s growing political influence in Europe recently asked. He had picked up on… Continue reading Europe needs to wake up to China’s influencing strategies
Unless Europe finds a way to outweigh US sanctions on Iran, Iranian dependency on China will grow.
