Central European attitudes towards Chinese energy investments: The cases of Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic Richard Q. Turcsanyi a,b,n a Institute of International Relations, Nerudova 3, 118 00 Prague, Czech Republic b Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Jostova 11, 603 00 Brno, Czech Republic HIGHLIGHTS  Chinese investments in energy are perceived more negatively than investments in other sectors due to their strategic nature.  Availability, affordability, and efficiency appear in Poland as a result of the special position of coal.  Environmental stewardship appears as an issue in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  The Polish discourse is most similar to Europe-wide discourse. article info Article history: Received 1 February 2016 Received in revised form 12 September 2016 Accepted 14 September 2016 Keywords: Chinese investments Central Europe Perception of China Poland Czech Republic Slovakia abstract This article builds on Europe-wide knowledge of EU-China energy investment relations and discusses the cases of three Central European countries’ attitudes towards Chinese energy investments. It focuses on how Chinese investments are perceived compared to investments from other countries, and how the energy sector is perceived compared to other sectors. Media analysis, interviews with experts, and semi- structured questionnaires were used as data sources. It was discovered that these three countries dislike foreign control over strategic assets and Chinese energy investments are seen as falling into this category. The discourse frames on the general level fluctuate between beneficial and threatening at both the political and economic levels, yet the benefits are seen as greater than any potential threats in all three countries. Energy security frames are only just beginning to be discussed within national discourses about Chinese energy investments. In Poland, the Chinese presence in the energy sector is framed as an issue of availability, affordability, and efficiency, and is related to Polish plans for maximizing efficient use of local coal resources. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, China is often perceived ideologically and only the energy frame of environmental stewardship is present in a minor way. & 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction It is generally understood in Europe that Chinese capital is going to play some role on European soil in the future. How specific countries respond to Chinese investments, however, depends on the specific sector in which the investments are made and the country in question. The situation becomes especially interesting when considering Chi- nese investments in the energy sector; such investments make up the largest share of Chinese investments in Europe (Hanemann and Huotari, 2015, p. 15; see also Liedtke, 2015; Fernandez and Garcia, 2015; compare with Zhang et al., 2013). In recent years, several landmark deals have been made in this respect, such as the Chinese acquisitions of renewable energy companies and a large share of the power grid in Portugal (Almeida and Reis, 2012), Chinese involvement in a nuclear construction project in the United Kingdom (Thomas, 2016), and a number of Chinese acquisitions of German companies in the renewable energy sector (TaylorWessing, 2013). Responses throughout Europe have varied between feelings of financial relief, cautious optimism about economic benefits, worries about growing competition and other negative economic influences, and national security fears (Roberts, 2012; Bugge, 2011; see also Merler, 2014; Sattich and Freeman, 2015). Although one can expect the situation in Central Europe to share some similarities with the above-mentioned cases, there are also many differences due to the region's unique domestic and international characteristics. 1 This paper focuses on the situation Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol Energy Policy http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.09.035 0301-4215/& 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. n Correspondence address: Institute of International Relations, Nerudova 3, 118 00 Prague, Czech Republic. E-mail address: turcsanyi@mail.muni.cz 1 This article addresses the situation in three Central European countries, but it does not claim that other countries or parts of other countries do not fall under the term Central Europe. For more on the concept, history, culture, economy, security, and international relations of Central Europe, see, for example, Kundera (1984), Halecki (1980), Magocsi (2005), Sabic and Drulak (2012, eds.), and Daniel and Turcsanyi (2015, eds.) Please cite this article as: Turcsanyi, R.Q., Central European attitudes towards Chinese energy investments: The cases of Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Energy Policy (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.09.035i Energy Policy ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎