1 OSW COMMENTARY NUMBER 250 www.osw.waw.pl Centre for Eastern Studies NUMBER 250 | 15.09.2017 Jakub Jakóbowski, Marcin Kaczmarski Despite China’s growing political and economic involvement in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), Beijing has not succeeded in making an attractive offer to the region’s EU member states – who make up the majority of the participants in the ‘16+1’ format. The inancing model proposed by China, based on loans and favouritism towards Chinese companies, has proved to be unsuitable to local conditions. Therefore, the much-discussed infrastructure co- operation has not even started. Consequently, Beijing has failed to obtain the political tools which could have weakened policy coherence at the European level, or even divided the EU. In this context, the allegations appearing in the public debate that the countries of the ‘16+1’ have been fostering divisions within the EU seem to be substantially incorrect. As long as Central and Eastern Europe remains capable of pursuing its economic and developmental in- terests within the architecture of the European Union, the political risks coming from China’s capital inlow will remain limited. At the same time, the EU has room to facilitate constructive economic relationships between China and the Central European region. For example, it could reduce Beijing’s political pressure on CEE to use the speciic, Chinese model for inancing and building infrastructure. Cooperation at the EU level could also help to adapt the Chinese offer to the European business and regulatory environment. Cooperation between China and Central & East- ern Europe, which since 2012 has been devel- oped within the ‘16+1’ format, has become the object of heated discussions in the European press and within think-tanks 1 . There is a predom- inance of critical interpretations which portray China’s actions as a strategy of divide et impera, aimed at breaking up the unity of the Europe- an Union. The eleven states which are both EU 1 EU uneasy over China’s efforts to woo central and eastern European states, Financial Times, 8 May 2017; https://www.ft.com/content/2e98f6f4-089d-11e7-ac5a- 903b21361b43, China’s investment in inluence: the future of 16+1 cooperation, ECFR, 2017, http://www. ecfr.eu/publications/summary/chinas_investment_in_in- luence_the_future_of_161_cooperation7204#_ftn1; Ja- copo Maria Pepe, China’s Inroads into Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe: Regional and Global Implica- tions for Germany and the EU, DGAP 2017, https://dgap. org/de/article/getFullPDF/29291 members and participants in the ‘16+1’ format have met with criticism from EU partners and institutions 2 . One of the most commonly refer- enced arguments is the potential impact of en- hanced economic cooperation with China, which is one of the ‘16+1’s main objectives, on the po- litical choices of the eleven European countries which are members of this format. According to this narrative, attracting Chinese capital will increase dependence on Beijing and lead to in- dividual governments supporting China’s diplo- matic initiatives, as well as voting its way in in- ternational organisations, including EU forums. 2 Berlin uneasy about Beijing’s growing clout in east- ern, southern Europe, SCMP, 18 February 2017, http:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/arti- cle/2072046/ Berlin-uneasy-about-beijings-growing- clout-eastern Beijing’s mistaken offer: the ‘16+1’ and China’s policy towards the European Union