3. Deepening Economic and Trade Ties to Yield Fruitful Results

Thanks to China-CEEC Cooperation, trade between China and the CEECs saw significant growth in the past eight years, as evidenced by the growth in trade volume and the share of China-CEEC trade in China-EU trade. Chinese customs statistics show that China’s trade with 17 CEECs stood at 56.08 billion US dollars in 2012. In 2019, this number reached 95.45 billion US dollars, up by 6.91% year-on-year. This represents an increase of 70.2% in seven years. But it is worth noticing that due to the limited economic size of CEECs, geographical location and industrial structure, the share of China-CEEC trade remains relatively low. In 2012, the share of trade with the 17 CEECs accounted for only 1.45% in China’s total trade and 7.68% in China-EU trade. The seven years after that has seen steady growth in the share of China-CEEC trade in China’s total trade. In 2019, China-CEEC trade accounted for 2.09% and 12.81% respectively in China’s total trade and China-EU trade, still low but steadily growing year by year. ^[1]

Chinese investment in CEECs has grown significantly as well (see attached the list of investment and cooperation projects). Total Chinese investment in the 17 CEECs stood at 3 billion US dollars in 2014 and over 10 billion in 2018, while CEEC investment in China exceeded 1.5 billion. The Budapest-Belgrade Railway, the China-Europe Land-Sea Express Line, the Smokovac-Meteševo Highway in Montenegro, the Smederevo Steel Plant in Serbia, the Stanari Thermal Power Plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Peljesac Bridge in Croatia have all become exemplary projects.