Seven pages brought the turnaround: The representatives of the EU and China were able to agree on a communiqué at their summit on Tuesday. Above all, the representatives of the People's Republic are said to have made concessions. So they agreed to open the Chinese markets more and allow fair competition. A demand that has been addressed to Beijing for many years, but so far with limited success.

A few days later, on Friday, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang has a much more enjoyable date. Then summit 16 + 1 will start in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where heads of state and government from China and Central and Eastern Europe will meet. Where the ninth meeting of the 16 + 1 also means its end: Greece is expected to join the format, which thus becomes the 17 + 1. Twelve of the summit participants would then also be EU states. A success for China - and a counterpoint to the tough negotiations at the beginning of the week.

In Brussels, however, the forum is viewed critically. China may have divisive intentions, diplomats worry. In the run-up, there was already speculation as to how long Beijing would even maintain the format, given the disapproval within the EU.

Many billions of dollars invested

However, China does not want to do without it, partly because the Eastern European states are important for the gigantic infrastructure project "New Silk Road" as an "gateway to Europe". Especially the Balkans could become an important transport route to Central Europe. Data from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) show that China invested billions of dollars in Eastern Europe between 2007 and 2018, either through loans or direct construction contracts.

The projects alone, with a volume of more than $ 100 million listed by the AEI's China Investment Tracker, add up to nearly $ 29 billion. With the exception of 2015 and 2016, the dataset shows a continuous increase, but has no claim to completeness because of the non-transparent project allocation.

According to dataset, by far the largest Chinese activity in Serbia is among the 16 countries (23 projects, total volume more than ten billion dollars). There, Beijing has invested mainly in the steel and armaments industry as well as in smart infrastructure projects. It is followed by Hungary (almost four billion dollars) and Poland (about three billion dollars). Four of the 16 countries do not even exist: Albania, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovakia.

Although many governments in the Eastern European countries are happy to accept Chinese investment, three major problems are emerging:

1. Fear of over-indebtedness by overdrawn loans

"The debt problem of Montenegro is enormous," stated the Center for Global Development (CGD) in a study on the "New Silk Road." This is also evident from the AEI data, especially compared to the gross domestic product of the individual states. In Montenegro, China has invested only in an infrastructure project, but this has increased the debt of the small state last year to 83 percent with more than a billion dollars. The project involves a connection between the port of Bar and Serbia, which would make transport routes to the Balkans better accessible. Just under 85 percent of the costs for the first phase of the project were taken over by the Export-Import Bank of China, according to CGD. The interest rate should therefore be at two percent and the total amount over a period of 20 years to be repaid.

Concern about the consequences of such over-indebtedness through generous Chinese loans are neither new nor unfounded: in Sri Lanka, the government was so in debt for a port on the "New Silk Road" that China became the tenant of Hambantota Port for the next 99 years registered - to the annoyance of the population, which went out into the street.

2. Promised investments will not be implemented

A second point makes Chinese investment not just a blessing: the discrepancy between promised and actual investment. This difference is evident from figures from the Balkans in the report on the Munich Security Conference 2019. It follows, for example, that in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the end, much less Chinese money was actually granted as a loan than had been announced. The situation is similar in North Macedonia:

Other countries of the 16 + 1 have apparently desired more reliability from the Chinese side. For example, the Polish government has been in talks with representatives from Beijing for several years about participating in the new major airport in Warsaw, but so far there are no concrete commitments from China. In the Czech Republic, there were also disagreements after far fewer Chinese participations than planned in several projects. Spokesman for Czech President Miloš Zeman, who has traveled to Beijing on several occasions, said in March last year, "The People's Republic of China is changing its investment strategy and we believe the trend will increase following this change."

3. General planlessness

The People's Republic of China, with "Made in China 2025", has indeed designed a road map for the next few years, which, for example, envisages being the world leader in robotics and artificial intelligence by that date. Chinese companies are also very much in the mood for this with regard to company acquisitions such as robot builder Kuka in Germany. In Eastern Europe, according to experts, but less felt. Infrastructure projects alone are therefore perceived as insufficient; there was a lack of coordinated cultural exchange. Hardly anyone would like to say that openly.

The government in Beijing does not want to get involved in the wrath of China's more important EU states, such as Germany and France, by engaging in Eastern Europe anyway. Therefore, Beijing and the 16 other countries participating in the Dubrovnik Forum announced earlier this week that they would submit joint contracts in Brussels. Never before have EU representatives been involved in the 16 + 1 meeting as it was this year.