China in the Security Conundrumof Europe’s Southeastern Periphery

By Plamen Tonchev and Vasilis Petropoulos, Petropoulos is a Fletcher Alum

Introduction & Acknowledgements
In recent years the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has actively sought to spread its influence worldwide amid shifting global dynamics and intensified great power competition. Although the Indo-Pacific, Central Asia and Africa are habitually framed as the standard geographical arenas of China’s power projection, another theatre – as vital to the transatlantic interests as it is overlooked – is also home to brisk, albeit cautious, Chinese activity. The contiguous area running from the Western Balkans to the Black Sea basin down to the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean is steadily gaining traction in Beijing’s foreign policy agenda. While so far China’s presence in this region has been mainly economic, anchored in its much-touted Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it is increasingly extending into the security realm, too – from military-tomilitary contacts to deeper cooperation in critical areas, such as joint naval drills, dual-use infrastructure and technologies to arms sales.

Europe’s southeastern periphery (ESEP) is not an established entity in geography or area studies, and the term could easily be confused with the Balkans. Here it is used for the sake of convenience, but this is a deliberate choice as well. Not only does it cover countries on the edge of Europe, but also its ‘near abroad’ (Figure 1). This broader region is of particular interest to China, as a meeting point of the Maritime Silk Road and the Middle Corridor through the Caucasus. Europe, too, is increasingly preoccupied with developments to its east and south, and this is what renders the ESEP region a meaningful notion and a much-needed area of research.

Read the full paper here.

(This post is republished from the Institute of International Economic Relations.)