Different Places, Different Faces: Chinese Investment in Central and Eastern Europe

To what extent and with what aims have Chinese investors approached the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as investment locations? This paper mixes basic quantitative indicators with deeper case studies in a variety of sectors, including manufacturing (e.g., autos), public procurement (e.g., road building), services (e.g., retail sales), energy (e.g., natural gas) and financial services (e.g., sovereign lending). The cases focus on widely-held images (“faces”) of Chinese investor behavior and investigate the extent to which these images are grounded in empirical realities. In a nutshell, the images I develop are 1) that the Chinese seek European technology, but face resistance from technology leaders in the EU and thus turn to opportunities in CEE instead. Here, I focus on a case study of The Great Wall auto company in Bulgaria; 2) that the Chinese seek access to lucrative public procurement markets in Europe, but that they try to deploy their market leverage to rewrite contracts in ways that disadvantage European “buyers.” Here, I cover the Covec Case in Poland; 3) that the Chinese seek to exploit co-ethnic networks, and I look at the case of retail sales by Chinese nationals in Hungary; 4) finally, that the Chinese seek macroeconomic influence over European states and look first to those who combine vulnerability and eccentricity. Here, again, I focus on the case of Hungary.