00:00:37 Remko Tanis

In fact, some countries there see China as an outright adversary for its support to Russia's war on Ukraine. In this episode, we'll talk about the diverse views on China from Central and Eastern Europe, and how these impact the overall China policy of the European Union. And we do that with Alicja Bachulska. Alicja is a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations based in Warsaw,

00:01:00 Remko Tanis

Poland. She's also a research fellow at CHOICE, a collective of China observers in Central and Eastern Europe. She co-authored a CHOICE report that came out very timely just last month, shortly before Xi Jinping's visit to Central and Eastern Europe, and just two months before the European Parliament elections of early June. The title of the report is

00:01:20 Remko Tanis

Missing Pieces? How Central and Eastern Europe can contribute to a stronger European approach to China. And, by the way, the Central and Eastern Europe region is also known by its shorthand CEE. So that's what you'll hear it referred to sometimes in our conversation.

00:01:34 Remko Tanis

Alicja Bachulska, welcome to State of Asia.

00:01:36 Alicja Bachulska

Thank you for having me.

00:01:39 Remko Tanis

We're speaking a couple of days after Chinese leader Xi Jinping's visit to France, Serbia and Hungary and during the visits Xi upgraded China's ties with EU and NATO member Hungary to an all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership for the new era. And Xi said the two countries will do their utmost to guide their relationship onto a golden path,

00:01:58 Remko Tanis

which as Xi said help us attain lofty goals. From what I understand as far as diplomatic rankings go, this puts Hungary quite close to Russia and North Korea in terms of the professed strength of ties with China. So, there's maybe much to unpack here. Like how do we define this new era Xi Jinping likes to talk about? And I thought at the same time it's maybe easy to dismiss this kind of language

00:02:20 Remko Tanis

As part of just the protocol during official high-level visits, but I'm wondering if that's a mistake. What do you make of this language and this partnership for the new era between Hungary and China?

00:02:31 Alicja Bachulska

I think that I wouldn't dismiss the language at all.

00:02:35 Alicja Bachulska

Because I think it's quite telling when it comes to the overall shape of EU-China relations and would grow the role Hungary plays in this context. I think that if you look broadly at the trajectory of Europe-China relations, it's very clear that in the past couple of years with the pandemic, with the war in Ukraine, with what has happened

00:02:56 Alicja Bachulska

to the international value chains, with how China has turned inwards both economically but also politically, we're also witnessing a shift in Europe's approach towards China. And here Hungary, if there ever was a Trojan horse threatening unity,

00:03:13 Alicja Bachulska

it is definitely Hungary and now it's very, very clear after Xi’s visit that the way Xi Jinping tried to portray his friendship or his relationship with Victor Orban is a litmus test of how he's also trying to deal with Europe more broadly. So, on the one hand, you have all these countries that are turning

00:03:33 Alicja Bachulska

much more assertive, with France probably the most hawkish European country when it comes to its China policy. On the other hand, you have Hungary, which with Victor Orban as his leader, invested a lot of political capital to have very good relationship with China.

00:03:51 Alicja Bachulska

And you could say that economically, if you look at the overall, for example, when it comes to FDI in Hungary, the numbers for many, many years were not that great for many years, Chinese FDI was only around 1% of total FDI inflows from China to Europe, but

00:04:11 Alicja Bachulska

if you look at the trajectory in the recent years, it's very clear that this political backing and the political

00:04:18 Alicja Bachulska

enthusiasm on the side of Orban when it comes to cooperating with China and trying to be this Trojan horse of unity translated into an inflow of Chinese FDI in one of the most crucial sectors, which is the electric vehicle sector and now Hungary is actually becoming not only a regional hub when it comes to

00:04:38 Alicja Bachulska

for example, the production of lithium batteries, but also a European hub with a very clear trend of China investing in Hungary in this sector, probably because of the good political relationship between Victor Orban and Xi Jinping.

00:04:55 Alicja Bachulska

So again, circling back to the bigger trend, it's very clear that the language we're seeing, the language surrounding the visit of Xi Jinping in Hungary on the one hand, it's obviously a diplomatic show and we should not take it at face value. But on the other hand, if you compare this kind of language we're witnessing right now with the rhetoric surrounding the visit to,

00:05:16 Alicja Bachulska

for example,

00:05:16 Alicja Bachulska

France, you can see a clear difference and different accents put on different areas and very clearly Hungary is now being, I wouldn't maybe say used, because there's clearly an interest on both sides, but for example, if you look at the speech of Xi Jinping in

00:05:35 Alicja Bachulska

Budapest, he said

00:05:37 Alicja Bachulska

very explicitly that China supports Hungary in playing a bigger role in shaping EU-China relations.

00:05:45 Alicja Bachulska

So, it is about China backing Orban's ambitions to be a disruptive actor in EU politics, and that's something we should be really examining very closely because it only adds up to the EU's internal problems. And Victor Orban is playing on many fronts when it comes to making Europe

00:06:06 Alicja Bachulska

weaker when it comes to its internal cohesion.

00:06:09 Remko Tanis

July 1st, Hungary takes over the rotating 6-month presidency of the European Union Council. How much worry should there be in other European capitals about Hungary taking up this position from July 1st so shortly after proclaiming together with China that they’re after loftier goals they want to realize together?

00:06:28 Alicja Bachulska

I think that here we definitely need to look at Hungary's agenda, but at the same time, at the EU level, you have different actors at

00:06:36 Alicja Bachulska

play, so Hungary cannot completely take over the EU agenda when it comes to China in this position, but we're also looking at the very important event, which is the elections to the European Parliament and what we've seen at ECFR is that we've done some research concerning the future scenarios when it comes to

00:06:57 Alicja Bachulska

the outlook of the European Parliament. Unfortunately, one of the predictions, is that we might see a much more populist coalition forming in the European Parliament and this also translates into the way the Parliament might engage with China.

00:07:13 Alicja Bachulska

What we're seeing is that on the one hand you have the alt right parties and they are usually quite friendly towards China. Within the alt right you have this approach where China is quite idealized as an economic partner. Across Europe, we're seeing alt right party members oftentimes saying that

00:07:33 Alicja Bachulska

a return to business as usual with China is in Europe's interest. But then, on the other hand, you have also the alt left parties.

00:07:40 Alicja Bachulska

They are quite similar in this outlook, although they might underline and stress different elements of why China is a perceived positive actor in the international arena. So, if we see this much more polarized European Parliament materializing this year, we might also see quite a different approach.

00:08:01 Alicja Bachulska

For example, towards Taiwan and again, the European Parliament is not the most important body

00:08:06 Alicja Bachulska

in the EU,

00:08:07 Alicja Bachulska

but certainly, we're also seeing friends that suggest

00:08:10 Alicja Bachulska

that the current, much more assertive tone might be changing in the future, but that is not to say that you will suddenly go back to business as usual. I think that the changes we've been seeing in the past couple of years and the understanding of certain issues, how, for example

00:08:30 Alicja Bachulska

China's industrial policy effects European markets, this has already translated into a very deep change in the mindset of many Europeans.

00:08:41 Alicja Bachulska

So, it's not about reversing these trends, but rather maybe having a little bit more of a diversity when it comes to accentuating certain positions or perspectives. But this will be a long journey, definitely.

00:08:54 Remko Tanis

You're part of CHOICE, the platform which stands for China Observers In Central and Eastern Europe and at last month you co-authored a report titled Missing Pieces, How Central and Eastern Europe can contribute to a stronger European approach to China.

00:09:07 Remko Tanis

And the paper says it seeks to answer the question of how Central and Eastern European countries can use their experience and unique perspectives on relations with China, to contribute to a more unified, competent and self-confident European policy towards Beijing. And I looked at those, especially those adjectives, unique perspectives and a more unified,

00:09:27 Remko Tanis

competent and self-confident European policy which made me think,

00:09:31 Remko Tanis

OK, if you want to research how Central and Eastern European countries can contribute to that, does that also mean your research kind of concludes that the current European approach to China is incompetent and not so self-confident?

00:09:47 Alicja Bachulska

I think it's visibly more self-confident, but the ambition of different European states when it comes to shaping a more proactive agenda towards China

00:10:01 Alicja Bachulska

ranges from capital to capital, and here I think what the report underscores is the fact that in Central and Eastern Europe, although this region is not, you know, a unitary region in any way, you have the Baltic States that are very concerned about Russia's aggression and they are seeing China

00:10:21 Alicja Bachulska

primarily through the prism of China-Russia cooperation and how it affects the war in Ukraine.

00:10:26 Alicja Bachulska

Then you have the Visegrad 4 countries that currently with Slovakia and Hungary definitely do not look at Beijing in a similar way. And then you have southern Europe and Western Balkans, where many countries are not part of the EU. So definitely this region is very diverse, but at the same time, although

00:10:46 Alicja Bachulska

we are seeing

00:10:47 Alicja Bachulska

a whole set of approaches and attitudes toward

00:10:50 Alicja Bachulska

China, at the same time, there are a few countries that are definitely very ambitious when it comes to backing a much more proactive agenda towards China and here, Czechia and Lithuania are definitely the textbook examples. But over time, I also think that Poland might become such a country.

00:11:10 Alicja Bachulska

Especially with the new government, that is much more Europe orientated and with Minister Sikorski having, I think, a big ambition when it comes to shaping European policy.

00:11:21 Alicja Bachulska

So, I think that our report is not necessarily about saying that the EU’s China policy is going towards the wrong direction, because that's definitely not what we wanted to convey. That's not our message, but rather it's about making the voices of CEE countries heard more across Europe, so that the experiences

00:11:41 Alicja Bachulska

and perspectives of these countries that for many years were perceived as the new European Union or, you know, the younger partners,

00:11:49 Alicja Bachulska

but it's been 20 years, and most of these countries that are new Member States are now fully grown members of this community, and if we can talk about any kind of ‘we’, we do have a voice and we do have different perspectives. And here, for example, the way we see China-Russia cooperation is something very crucial.

00:12:10 Alicja Bachulska

That's the sensitivity that needs to be brought back into the European discourse at the EU level, and it is happening, actually, it is happening. We are witnessing that when it comes to bringing these sensitivities, I think it's we're now at the crucial

00:12:24 Alicja Bachulska

point in time where, in order for the EU to become more resilient in the long run against the backdrop of global changes of security challenges we're seeing, and not only here in Europe, but also in the Pacific, how these challenges are interconnected. We need to bring these voices and these perspectives

00:12:45 Alicja Bachulska

into the European mainstream

00:12:46 Alicja Bachulska

to make them heard much, much louder across Europe.

00:12:50 Remko Tanis

Makes me think of something you wrote in the report which says that some EU officials have fallen into the trap of talking about multipolarity as China likes to see it instead of multilateralism, that the contribution of CEE countries lies in recentering the discussion on multilateralism. What's the issue that that these countries have, with China's view of

00:13:09 Remko Tanis

a multipolar world and how is multilateralism working better for them, and maybe how do you define it?

00:13:16 Remko Tanis

What is the difference exactly?

00:13:17 Alicja Bachulska

Multipolar world for China is a

00:13:20 Alicja Bachulska

world, where US-led organizations, where the rules-based international order is undermined, is becoming weaker, and that's the order that gives security and guarantees sovereignty of most of these countries here in Central and Eastern Europe and in this context, if you look at China's messaging to 

00:13:40 Alicja Bachulska

the world's third countries, especially in

00:13:43 Alicja Bachulska

the global South,

00:13:44 Alicja Bachulska

it's very clear that China and Russia

00:13:46 Alicja Bachulska

share this goal

00:13:48 Alicja Bachulska

of upholding a multipolar world, because of their shared interest in undermining the US-led international order, and I think that for these countries bringing this message to some of the audiences in the so-called Global South

00:14:04 Alicja Bachulska

could be beneficial because it's about recentering

00:14:07 Alicja Bachulska

this debate not around necessarily the US factor per se, but rather about the interest of smaller players. China and Russia are two countries that don't really, if you look at the kind of official messaging, obviously it states that they respect all countries no matter big or small.

00:14:27 Alicja Bachulska

But if you look at the intellectual discourse coming from China, it's very clear that it's directed and led by this idea of the survival of the fittest.

00:14:36 Alicja Bachulska

It's a mindset dominated by the idea that you only have big powers and if you cannot become a big power, a major power, you will most probably perish. And for China it is rooted in its historical experiences of you know, the century of humiliation, 19th century and everything that then happened

00:14:56 Alicja Bachulska

in the 20th century. But I think that if you try

00:15:00 Alicja Bachulska

to understand what this kind of mindset means nowadays, it's very clear that it is not a mindset that is safe for smaller and medium sized country, and I think that's the messaging we could also bring to the table as CEE in our communication with different parts of the world, especially also in the context

00:15:20 Alicja Bachulska

of the fact that we do not have a colonial past compared to, for example, France or the UK. This puts us in a more comfortable position

00:15:30 Alicja Bachulska

to engage with countries in many parts of the world that do not feel that they want to engage in this kind of debate with countries that do have a colonial past. So, I think that's quite interesting. And this argument is not really brought up that often in international discussions.

00:15:47 Remko Tanis

Maybe something else that makes these CEE countries unique, besides not having a colonial past, is this this decade-long shared unique experience between, say, 2012 and 2022 when

00:15:59 Remko Tanis

China made a first attempt of creating a coalition of countries both being EU Member States and outside of the EU like Serbia and other countries in the Western Balkans to really build ties there and build stronger ties. That that became the 17 + 1. Which, I think by now it's dwindled down to 14 + 1 with the Baltic states having left. But I don't really hear much about it anymore. I don't know if they still have their annual meeting or not. Probably not.

00:16:22 Remko Tanis

What should China do differently this time to become more successful in, as Xi said last week, built these regional ties in in Eastern Europe?

00:16:29 Alicja Bachulska

Frankly, I think that 14 + 1, whatever number +1,

00:16:34 Alicja Bachulska

is a zombie format at this point and there is no way to revive it under the same umbrella by Beijing under current political conditions. That just impossible for a variety of reasons. But as I was saying, I think that on the one hand you have China's approval for the war in

00:16:54 Alicja Bachulska

Ukraine, which is seen in many parts of this region as an existential threat.

00:17:00 Alicja Bachulska

And China is now seen as an actor with ambitions to reshape in the European security architecture along Russia's interests. But then also you have this whole decade of economic and political engagement that has not translated into tangible results on the ground. Chinese investment remains minimal

00:17:20 Alicja Bachulska

in most CEE countries.

00:17:23 Alicja Bachulska

The situation is a bit different in the Western Balkans, with Serbia being one of the textbook examples, but that's more of an exception rather than rule, so most CEE countries that are part of the EU they have access to different financial instruments that come from Brussels and those are much more attractive

00:17:43 Alicja Bachulska

compared to the Chinese offer and many countries in CEE realize that what China was offering

00:17:50 Alicja Bachulska

was basically not in their interests. The kind of big BRI infrastructure projects that were presented, for example, to Montenegro, they in the EU context, they look very, very different. And here I think that we basically on the one hand with the war in Ukraine

00:18:10 Alicja Bachulska

and with the current economic shift and China becoming much more inward looking and investing only in certain sectors, the only area where we are actually seeing cooperation or even competition for investment is electric vehicles.

00:18:25 Alicja Bachulska

But this is on its own a very controversial topic and a topic that many in Europe are not sure how to turn their head heads around, because on the one hand, again, you have the whole debate about whether we want this kind of investment. What are the implications for European security? But then you also have the

00:18:45 Alicja Bachulska

business community that is competing against one another, to attract as much investment as possible, and Hungary is a primary example of that. So, we are in this debate where

00:18:58 Alicja Bachulska

the crucial kind of assessments are still not made. Do we want this investment in the end, what happens to this kind of investment when, for example, we have an escalation in the Pacific? What is the strategic mindset of Europeans when it comes to Chinese electric vehicles?

00:19:17 Alicja Bachulska

What about European industrial competitiveness in the long run, how to actually approach China in this?

00:19:24 Alicja Bachulska

Do we want to have a unified approach or not? So, there are so many questions and not that many answers. Although if you look at the at the EU level, if you look at Brussels, there's a very clear strategic mindset forming out there. But this does not have to mean that all capitals across Europe and across the region

00:19:45 Alicja Bachulska

are on the same page.

00:19:46 Remko Tanis

Another point which you point out where Central and Eastern European countries could have a greater impact in the European China debate, is the engagement with Taiwan. I wanted to talk about that a bit and I saw the numbers that were quoted

00:20:00 Remko Tanis

in the report you published saying, they come from the EU Taiwan Tracker, which was created by the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, saying that in 2022 alone, interactions between Taiwan and Central and Eastern European states constituted 60% of all Taiwan-EU interactions. So, the majority.

00:20:20 Remko Tanis

In 2022, there were,

00:20:21 Remko Tanis

according to this EU Taiwan Tracker, 96 interactions between CEE States and Taiwan, a lot more than Germany or France had interactions with Taipei.

00:20:30 Remko Tanis

What is behind this seemingly enthusiasm of Central and Eastern European countries towards Taiwan, and how does that not endanger their relation with Beijing? I mean, Lithuania has of course, experienced what it can mean.

00:20:43 Alicja Bachulska

There are two primary drivers of this new engagement or push towards engagement with Taiwan in the region. So, on the one hand, you have pragmatic concerns. So, Taiwan is increasingly seen as a place where innovation is cutting edge and in this context

00:21:03 Alicja Bachulska

economic cooperation with Taiwanese firms, for example in the semiconductor industry,

00:21:08 Alicja Bachulska

is seen as something that should be developed, and it's in the interest of CEE countries. But then again, you also have the normative dimension which goes back to the question of the war in Ukraine and how China is seen as a disruptive actor in the international arena and many smaller countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

00:21:29 Alicja Bachulska

Now they see Taiwan as a very close partner in defending certain values, democratic values and norms that underpin the existing world order. So, it goes back again to the question of multilateralism versus multipolarity.

00:21:44 Alicja Bachulska

How multipolarity is not necessarily in the interest of smaller countries that are also geopolitically located in quite dangerous zones such as Taiwan, and Central and Eastern Europe right next to Russia. These two drivers are overlapping and they're different political

00:22:05 Alicja Bachulska

actors that tried to exploit these dynamics. There is also a danger of overestimating the

00:22:12 Alicja Bachulska

potential of Taiwanese investment in Central and Eastern Europe, and what we've seen in the report and what we wanted to underline in the CHOICE report that you mentioned before, is the fact that it's very, very important to, on the one hand, value cooperation with Taiwan as it is, but also not to create these

00:22:33 Alicja Bachulska

overblown expectations

00:22:34 Alicja Bachulska

that could potentially follow the same trajectory as with China-CEE relations. So, this China fatigue that was created a couple of years ago that was not a good thing. It was quite detrimental to the overall state of the political debate in Central and Eastern Europe. The debate was not reflecting the reality.

00:22:55 Alicja Bachulska

But also, it's, I'm not trying to say that you know, it was only our fault, but China was also approaching the region with a lack of understanding of the diversity of the internal diversity of this part of Europe.

00:23:07 Alicja Bachulska

But with Taiwan, I think it's very important not to romanticize the potential of Taiwan-CEE cooperation. It's very important to keep the momentum going, but not to overshoot, because this might in the end create a pushback at the political level with

00:23:27 Alicja Bachulska

people becoming disincentivized to actually keep on cooperating with Taiwanese entities.

00:23:33 Remko Tanis

Last month as well, the Asia Society Policy Institute published a report on what we could learn from Lithuania's experience with Chinese economic coercion.

00:23:42 Remko Tanis

In late 2020, Lithuania decided to seek closer ties with Taiwan, including allowing Taiwan to open up a representative office in Vilnius. China responded with a de facto trade embargo. In response, Lithuania rallied other EU countries and other major countries like the US, the UK, Australia, South Korea, which increased its imports of Lithuanian goods even.

00:24:01 Remko Tanis

Things seem to settle down a bit again. I mean, the Baltic States definitely have left, for example, that that now pretty much defunct 17 + 1 grouping or 14 + 1. What do you see in Lithuania's handling of this and do you think China learned anything from how to approach the region differently?

00:24:18 Alicja Bachulska

I think that for China this,

00:24:20 Alicja Bachulska

it was quite a big surprise, the kind of dynamics that were unleashed by its coercion against Lithuania. I think that China did not expect Europe to act in support of Lithuania, and this was a bumpy ride. This was not something that was very swift, but in the end, I think that now we're looking at

00:24:41 Alicja Bachulska

the reality where the crisis or the whole situation between China and Lithuania has resulted in the creation of, for example, the anti-coercion instrument at

00:24:50 Alicja Bachulska

the EU level.

00:24:51 Alicja Bachulska

So, we do have a tool at hand that can be used against third parties that use economic coercion against EU countries. But the question is, do we have the political will to actually implement this tool over time against the backdrop of all the pressures coming from different direction? But overall, I think that

00:25:12 Alicja Bachulska

Lithuania's case it's a very interesting one, but I think it won't be emulated by other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Lithuania had a very specific background, it's a very small country.

00:25:25 Alicja Bachulska

It's a country that is very, very closely aligned with the US in terms of its security guarantees and then security considerations, but also a country that did not really have very, very close ties or overdependence on the Chinese market. So, Vilnius was basically able to completely redirect its foreign policy

00:25:45 Alicja Bachulska

without being that much afraid of 

00:25:48 Alicja Bachulska

types of this behavior.

00:25:50 Remko Tanis

The report mentioned several times the unique experience that that Central and Eastern European countries have had in dealing with the China over the past decade. And I thought one of the conclusions in the report was really interesting. That said that most Central and Eastern European countries have adopted a consistent and principled values-based approach in dealing with China, which the report says seems to be more difficult to

00:26:10 Remko Tanis

achieve in some Western European countries with higher business exposure and more intense company pressure in China. That sounds a bit like, well, the Central and Eastern European countries don't have that much to lose, like Lithuania,

00:26:22 Remko Tanis

in trying out different things.

00:26:25 Remko Tanis

But can you

00:26:25 Remko Tanis

color this in a bit for us? What is this principled approach and where in Western Europe then, is it more difficult?

00:26:31 Alicja Bachulska

I think this goes back to the broader debate about the role of Central and Eastern Europe in European politics for many years, for example, in the context of the 17 + 14 + 1 platform that we talked about. There was a widespread belief in so-called old Europe that

00:26:51 Alicja Bachulska

the CEE region is a Trojan horse for the European unity.

00:26:56 Alicja Bachulska

So, when this political renaissance of CEE-China relations started around a decade ago, many observers and politicians in Germany in France were very concerned about what is actually going on on the ground here in Central and Eastern Europe and for observers

00:27:16 Alicja Bachulska

on the ground here in the region, this was read as an act of double standards, because if you look at the trajectory of EU-China relations, Western Europe was the driving force of engagement for many

00:27:30 Alicja Bachulska

decades and from CEE perspective, a decade ago, it was about catching up with Western Europe. So, it was actually about emulating many of the experiences of Germany, France, Italy, Spain in the context of the post-2008 financial crisis and the need to diversify economic partnerships globally. And that was a very strange

00:27:51 Alicja Bachulska

moment in time because it was creating intra-EU tensions and it was also playing into these deep-seated divisions, historical divisions and perceptions between Central and Eastern Europe and

00:28:04 Alicja Bachulska

Western Europe. But then, fast forward a decade and we're in a very difficult scenario, so difficult and different because the region that used to be called the Trojan Horse of the Union is trying to actually drive this more unified agenda towards China and

00:28:24 Alicja Bachulska

Germany, the country that has probably the most economic incentives to retain business as usual in certain sectors such as the automotive sector,

00:28:34 Alicja Bachulska

it's still kind of sitting on the fence.

00:28:36 Alicja Bachulska

So we are

00:28:37 Alicja Bachulska

witnessing the implementation of Germany's first China strategy that was announced last year, and politically, we are also witnessing a major shift in the perception of German political elites for at least some of them towards China. But we also have a huge business

00:28:54 Alicja Bachulska

lobby that is doing its best to keep this quote unquote, pragmatic approach towards cooperation with China and here Central and Eastern European voices, and bringing the idea of Europe having to burn certain costs of strategic choices. That's an idea that I think CEE

00:29:14 Alicja Bachulska

countries, many of them are able to convey in Brussels, so, especially in the context of our experiences with Russia, and I'm not saying that, you know, China and Russia are exactly the same. This is a very simplistic view. But I'm saying that we do have enough evidence at this

00:29:29 Alicja Bachulska

point to understand that as of 2024, China and Russia are two major powers that are on the one hand, influencing our security, architecture and environment, but also especially China is the most important actor when it comes to the competitiveness of the European

00:29:50 Alicja Bachulska

market in the long

00:29:50 Alicja Bachulska

run and these things should be understood together like they cannot be treated separately. This is also related to the security in the

00:29:59 Alicja Bachulska

Indo-Pacific.

00:30:00 Alicja Bachulska

Potential escalation and you know, the two theaters merging the whole idea of China and Russia standing back-to-back and making strategic choices, understanding that the US cannot be overstretched forever on 2 fronts. There are so many layers of complexity in these dynamics and I think this is quite well-understood

00:30:20 Alicja Bachulska

in some CEE countries, but we are still witnessing the development of this debate and it's not quite

00:30:27 Alicja Bachulska

clear where we're going to end up. There are many, many powerful forces at play in different European countries and it's definitely an unfinished battle.

00:30:36 Remko Tanis

Alicja Bachulska, thank you very much for joining us. It was a really informative.

00:30:39 Alicja Bachulska

Thank you very much.