Western Balkans in China-European Relations

JIAN, Junbo (jianjunbo@fudan.edu.cn) 

Junbo Jian is an associate professor at the Center for China-EU Relations, Institute of International Studies at Fudan University. He was a Chinese diplomat to Croatia as well. His research fields include European issues studies, Chinese diplomacy and international relations theories. 

Professor Jian is the author of The Limitation of Power: A Study on the Legitimacy of the US Hegemony (in Chinese), African Affairs and China-EU Relations (in Chinese), and the co-editor of The Enlarged European Union: Prospects and Implications (in English) and Chinese Investment in Europe: From Political and Institutional Perspective (in Chinese). He was a visiting scholar at Durham University, Aalborg University, and London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Research Overview 

Due to its important geographical status, the western Balkans is an important channel connecting Europe and Asia. It has always been the object of great powers' competition, and has long been regarded as a natural part of Europe and the sphere of influence by the European Union and Western European countries. With the growth of China's investment in recent years, the European Union has begun to worry that China's economic participation in the region is raising a major geopolitical challenge to European, and correspondingly begins to strengthen its involvement in the western Balkans. 

However, due to the political complexity, cultural diversity and relative economic backwardness of the western Balkans, there are controversies within the EU on the plan to bring all the countries of western Balkans into the European Union, so are the expansion of the Schengen area. As a result, there is a big gap between the EU's willingness and the ability to integrate the western Balkans into EU. 

Ironically, the development of economic cooperation between the western Balkan countries and China is mutual beneficial, but all western Balkan countries has joined or eagers to join the EU, which makes these countries have to take a hedging position politically to deal with their “China policy”, so as to obtain the greatest benefits for their own countries. 

Under such circumstances, China-EU relations face both competition and contradiction as well as interdependence in the western Balkans. China's economic participation in the region will help the countries in the region approach the "threshold" of EU accession more quickly, which, in the EU’s view, is helpful for European integration and simultaneously, a threat to EU’s influence in this region. This China-EU Relations in Balkans indicate that this two-side relations will face a long-term competition and cooperation economically and politically, and meanwhile, western Balkans rather than the rest of Europe can provide more opportunities to ease and improve China-EU relations.