The Role and Influence of the People’s Republic of China on Visegrad Group Countries

President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda attended the opening ceremony of the 24th Olympic Winter Games in Beijing on February 4, 2022. The highlight of the Polish President’s three-day visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Sunday, February 6.

Czech and Slovak intelligence and counterintelligence agencies mention the threat from China in their reports more and more often. The growing importance of the PRC and its attempts to influence these countries are closely monitored. The degree of danger is frequently compared to Russian actions.

The new Czech governing coalition views relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) significantly differently than the incumbent Czech President Miloš Zeman. Although most of the key state positions were distributed smoothly, Zeman opposed the appointment of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Polish-Belarusian border crisis is definitely one of the most significant events of 2021, both in the European and international arena. Not only Lithuania (which is struggling with the same situation), but also important European players, such as Germany and France, the United States, as well as international organizations, for instance, NATO or the European Union, are already showing interest in the problem. According to political and media circles, China could play a significant part in solving this situation.

In recent years, the Slovak information and media space has been struggling with active disinformation actors, who have been quite willing to disseminate mostly pro-Russian narratives. China is currently an almost unknown phenomenon for Slovaks.

In early September 2021, Polish authorities donated 400,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan, which was enthusiastically welcomed by Taipei. However, this does not translate to a deterioration of relations between Warsaw and Beijing and a sudden strong support for Taiwan in its efforts to be recognized as an independent state.

Recent research on the European Parliament’s party groups’ voting patterns in the European Parliament has revealed that the EP is among the most resilient European institutions when it comes to foreign malign influence. This is especially true in the case of China, which has almost no soft power tools in its arsenal to influence the European decision-makers in the European Parliament. Beijing, even more so than the Kremlin, needs to resort to relations with individual member states on a case-by-case basis to pursue its interests within the EU, which is a highly effective strategy in the eastern part of the EU.

Among the countries of the Visegrád Group, Hungary is perceived as having relatively close ties with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, the recent protests in Budapest, Hungary’s capital, over the construction of a branch of China’s Fudan University seem to show that the public is divided on the issue of Viktor Orbán government’s foreign policy.

In 2021, we may observe a gradual improvement in relations between Warsaw and Beijing. This is indicated by a number of factors, most notably the increasing frequency of talks and high-level meetings, during which more openness to cooperation and the maintenance of current joint initiatives was expressed. However, this is not synonymous with a change of course in Poland’s foreign policy.

On 29-31 May, at the invitation of the Chinese side, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Poland and Hungary, Zbigniew Rau and Péter Szijjártó, visited Guiyang city in Guizhou province. There they met with Minister Wang Yi, with whom they discussed the matters of current economic and political cooperation, in particular the future of the 17+1 group. The visits coincided with a crisis in relations between China and the EU as well as the imposition of sanctions by each side in connection with the persecution of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang. The meeting was also prompted by the announcement of the Lithuanian Foreign Minister who said that Vilnius would effectively withdraw from the 17+1 format, which is a platform for cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries.