Introduction
Since 2019, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)¹ has been navigating a markedly changed geopolitical landscape, in which partnerships with non-EU actors are evaluated not only for their economic potential but also for their implications for security, political resilience, and long-term dependencies, particularly in the economic and technological spheres. The COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s large-scale war against Ukraine, rising economic uncertainty, and increasing societal polarisation have created a context in which the room for foreign policy decisions is much narrower and political missteps carry higher costs.
Unlike in previous decades, when cooperation with authoritarian states was often justified on pragmatic economic grounds, today the potential costs in terms of reputation, politics, and long-term systemic dependencies are becoming increasingly significant. As a result, even ostensibly “technical” economic decisions, such as investments, infrastructure projects, or technological cooperation, are now evaluated comprehensively in the region and factored into broader geopolitical calculations.
The concept of CEE is defined according to China’s approach to regional construction, as exemplified by the former “17+1” cooperation framework. This framework encompassed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Greece. Although these countries are seldom regarded as a single region in other contexts, within the “17+1” framework they constituted a distinct space where Beijing aimed to institutionalise its political and economic influence. It is precisely this political space that is used to evaluate the foreign policy approaches of China and Taiwan, while the empirical analysis focuses on the countries where geopolitical polarisation and competitive shifts were most pronounced between 2019 and 2025.
It is in this exact context that Central and Eastern Europe has emerged as a new arena where the decades-long global competition between China and Taiwan has taken shape. This is not their usual competition for regional “reorientation” or diplomatic recognition, as observed in the Global South, but rather a practical contest over influence, political visibility, operational frameworks, and acceptable boundaries.
China and Taiwan operate under asymmetrical conditions in the region. For Beijing, CEE continues to be a region of secondary strategic importance, yet one that remains politically sensitive. Increasingly active engagement there appears to be yielding growing reputational and political costs, while offering disproportionately limited strategic returns. For Taipei, it is a region more receptive to its influence, offering high symbolic and political returns and providing an opportunity to test the limits of its international activities to enhance Taiwan’s visibility and expand its diplomatic room for manoeuvre.
This analytical study aims to review the general trends and shifts in the implementation of China and Taiwan’s foreign policy in Central and Eastern Europe between 2019 and 2025 and to identify and analytically assess the main structural factors that have reshaped the conditions for their policies in the region, creating asymmetric risks, costs, and opportunities for both actors.
The publication can be found in English HERE.
