China Political Economy

When a billion Chinese jump, the earth definitely shakes.

Despite the huge potential for Chinese investment in UK infrastructure, many challenges still persist, none more so than a negative perception of Chinese investment, in particular when applied to nuclear energy. There is a historical  perception that China’s ability to build complex and large reactors may be as a result of cutting corner. There is, however, zero evidence to substantiate this - far from it, in fact. But it is no longer a case of the Chinese simply having the financial power; expertise now equals that and that makes for a very powerful equation and one the UK can certainly benefit from.

So while we ponder on how it might actually feel if one billion Chinese did jump in unison, China is looking beyond way its borders and instigating significant change where change would otherwise probably not be possible. While doing so, in the first 25 years of the 21st century, half of the world’s new buildings will be erected in China and 50,000 of them will be skyscrapers - equivalent to 10 New Yorks!

The "Länderbericht China" (Country Report China) is a flagship publication on contemporary China in German language. Funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education the report includes 27 articles written by distinguished scholars. The report covers a wide range of topics (geography, history, environment policies, economic, social and cultural dynamics, internal and external politics etc.)  relevant for understanding today's China. It is the third such report published by the Agency.

Property price in China skyrockted in a past few years, particularly housing and real estate. As the data shown at data analysis. According reliable sources, it caused by there is no tax obligations for non-income property. It attracts local and foreign buyer, to buy a property. The higher demand, make the property developer have a bargaining positions to raise the price as they pleased. There are several other causes of skyrocketed property price. This research conducted with quantitative descriptive method, and the data are collected from a number of reliable sources. It concluded that, despite the problem that raise due to tax system and policies. The government still able to make it more efficient, however many things need to be changed.

Keywords: Tax, Property, China

Perspectives on Chinese Business and Law contributes to the debate and understanding on China by offering insights and perspectives from both Chinese and European scholars on themes related to business and economic affairs. The current foreign trade and business related legal framework of China are expressed along with certain historical and political analysis on ChinaÆs development.

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China’s next five year plan, the thirteenth, will run from 2016-2020 (The Economist 2015). Now that China has become the world’s second largest economy, the implications of its five-year plans could have tremendous impact on economies around the world. For this reason it seems appropriate to explore and understand the concept of the five year plans which have played a significant role in China's economic development since the earliest days of the republic.

This paper will examine China’s first five year plan. Next, it will evaluate the success of the five year plans through number 12. Then it will introduce China’s 13th five year plan. Following this, there will be a discussion of possible obstacles China faces in achieving its goals. Finally, the credibility gap will be explored, where some economists believe that China’s growth has slowed to a much greater extent than the government’s published data would demonstrate or that the thirteenth five year plan is calling for.

In order to survive from capitalization and liberalization, China reforms the economic system. China economic is growing rapidly after being reformed. Since 2009-2014, GDP of China achieved the growth percentage more than 9%. It attracts foreign investor. FDI in China increased to 958.80 million US$ in October of 2014 from 873.60 million US$ in September of 2014. China also has good quality and quantity human resources that willing to work in very productive and efficient way with a minimum payment, due to high competition for job in China.  Beside, the attractiveness of investment in China. It concluded that investment in China come with a risk, such transparency, corruption, financial infrastructure and many more. This research conducted with a mix method of quantitative and qualitative.

Keyword: China, Investment, Risks

China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) is one of the largest projects ever undertaken. The proposed chain of roads, ports, fiber optic cables, and pipelines was designed to increase economic activity from China to South and Southeast Asia, Europe, The Middle East, and Africa. In addition to economic growth, OBOR brings the benefit of increased human capital through the promotion of education and the spread of the Chinese language. OBOR has also been instrumental in supporting a resurgence of Chinese identity among Cambodia’s ethnic Chinese community. The educational benefits which OBOR has brought to Cambodia include Chinese language programs, university scholarships, Chinese schools, and volunteer teachers. On the surface, OBOR is an economic project, but upon closer examination, OBOR is also a vehicle for the promotion of Chinese language and education.

China has become the second largest economy in the world in a historically unprecedented space of time. Subsequently, China has begun to exert a form of geoeconomic influence that is changing the way we think about both the nature of international relations in the 21st century and about the precise uses China’s policy- makers will put their growing power into. This paper explores these debates and China’s evolving approach to foreign and strategic policies through the prism of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). If the BRI becomes a reality it will quite literally cement China’s place at the centre of a regional network of production processes that will inevitability enhance China’s overall economic and geopolitical importance. At the very least, China’s ascent is forcing a reassessment about the nature of power and influence in the contemporary international system. Not only is the nature of economic organisation currently raising important theoretical and practical questions about the basis of international competi- tion, but it is also becoming increasingly clear that the power and influence of national governments are largely determined by relative shifts in the balance of economic power, as much as it is by more traditional strategic factors.

China's African investment has skyrocketed in recent years, moving from $7 billion in 2008 to $26 billion in 2013. In 2015, President Xi Jinping promised African states $60 billion in loans, aid, and export credit (knowledge.wharton 2016 and Robertson and Benabdallah 2016). This paper will examine China’s investment in Africa, quantify the investment and determine where the financing is coming from, which countries and sectors are the recipients, the motivation for the investment, the problems China faces in African investment, as well as the successes and failures of Chinese investment in Africa.

A study of China's modernisation is arguably the most important research project that Sinologists could embark on in close collaboration with China oriented scientists from various quarters ready and willing to co-operate with each other. The big question is: CAN CHINA BECOME A MODERN NATION WITHOUT LIBERTY?

Many economists believe that a country’s trade balance has an impact on the general health of the economy, including currency value, budget deficit, Gross domestic product (GDP), employment, Trade Volume (TV), Foreign direct Investment (FDI), Domestic Investment/GCF (Gross Capital Formation as percentage of GDP), Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Institutional Quality (IQ), budget balance, national income, living standards, and international competitiveness. The US-China trade deficit is one of the major points of contention in US China relations, which may cause President Trump to adopt protectionist trade policies regarding China.

This paper will utilise game theory to analyse the impact of trade deficit on the economy as well as the possible steps President Trump may take to remedy the US-China trade deficit, in order to determine the optimal policy recommendations for US-China Trade.

Since the dawn of the 20th century, the average life expectancy has increased nearly everywhere in the world. In the US, for example, the average life expectancy has gone from 45 to roughly 77. In China, the average life expectancy was just over 40, as recently as 1960. Today, the average Chinese person can expect to live past 75. At the same time, birthrates have dropped in most developed countries. In China, birthrates went from 5.8 in 1960 to 1.6 in 2014 (World Bank 2015).

Many China observers believe that China -- with an average age of 35, slowing GDP and plummeting birthrate -- is heading into one of the worst ageing traps the world has ever seen.

Resumo: O trabalho busca mostrar importância do branding na evolução comercial da China Continental através da crescente mudança de perspectiva sobre o produto chinês.
Com esse objetivo, será discutida a relevância de políticas sociais para o desenvolvimento de um país, assim como serão considerados os aspectos históricos, culturais, econômicos e geopolíticos tanto da China quanto dos Estados Unidos, para fins de comparação.
Os materiais serão examinados de forma a demonstrar a necessidade do branding para mudar a visão mundial sobre produto de qualidade e fortalecer a confiança do consumidor na indústria chinesa.

Abstract: The essay analyses the relevance of branding in the commercial evolution of Mainland China through the growing change of perspective on chinese products.
For that purpose, the study argues about the importance of social politics for the development of a country as well as the historical, cultural, economic and geopolitical aspects of both China and the United States in order to compare its role in said countries.
The study objects will be examined to demonstrate the necessity of branding to change the world view on the idea of quality products and to strengthen consumer confidence in the chinese industry.

中国是东南亚国家联盟（ASEAN）最大的贸易伙伴。 过去十年来，中国与东盟的贸易额增长了三倍多。 中国也是各个东盟成员国前五大贸易伙伴之一。中国是东盟最大的FDI合作伙伴之一
一些中国FDI项目包括：2015年，上海汽车工业公司与美国通用汽车公司和中国武陵汽车公司的合资企业（JV）开始在印度尼西亚兴建汽车厂。  北京汽车国际合作在马来西亚设厂。中通橡胶在泰国芭堤雅开了一家轮胎厂。中国企业能源基础设施项目 - 电力建设公司，湖北电气工程，中国重型机械总公司，中国国际水电，中国电机工程，中国投资总公司和能源部。华为和中兴通讯的电信业务也在该区域名列前茅

中国与东盟的经济关系有望继续增长。 本报告将考察东盟经济及其与中国的互动。 接下来，本报告将考察中国与几个特定的东盟国家之间的独立互动，这些国家包括：新加坡，泰国，越南，和柬埔寨。东南亚国家联盟是印度尼西亚，马来西亚，菲律宾，新加坡，泰国，文莱，柬埔寨，老挝，缅甸，越南等十个国家之间的区域经济合作。

The US and China stand on the brink of a trade war, with each side raising tariffs against each other’s imports. President Trump sees the levying of import tariffs as a mechanism for addressing a number of US business concerns regarding China trade. Many economists, on both sides of the trade dispute, are determined to predict, by way of economic models, which side of the trade dispute could wind up the winner and which would be the loser. This paper will analyze several of these models and the corresponding research reports. Finally, this paper will examine several Game Theory/Nash Equilibrium analysis of free trade versus tariffs to determine the optimization point for both the US and China.

Foreigners look at China’s tremendous population and see economic opportunity. Over the years, countless individuals and companies have tried to make their fortune in China, and most have failed. Starbucks would be one example of a company that has found great success in China. Starbuks China has achieved this success by positioning themselves as an aspirational, western brand which has adjusted their menu, offerings, and locations enough to appeal to the Chinese consumers, without losing their image as a foreign company. They have invested heavily in training their local staff and have learned to effectively utilize social media, a powerful tool in China. Starbucks is a shinning of example of what to do when opening a business in China.

China is now producing close to 7 million university graduates per year. At the same time, the economic growth is slowing down. According to an ABC News 2015 report,  The Chinese students who graduate university in 2015 are entering a job market where 1 million 2014 graduates have still not found employment. Graduate first-time job seekers face unemployment of more than 16 percent, but, the unemployment rate across all graduates is only 3 percent. Salaries for new graduates have dropped so low that in many cases skilled factory workers earn more. Employers in the white color sector complain that graduates lack employable skills. When hundreds of graduates with no skills and false expectations of high salaries compete for a small handful of positions in first-tier cities, Beijing and Shanghai, the blue collar sector has more jobs than applicants. This report explored China’s current labor market for new graduates. It examined the history of both the labor market and the higher education system. It discussed such subjects as, economic, societal, and political factors influencing the labor market, as well as overseas Chinese students returning, and finally, the behaviors and expectations of the graduates themselves.

In recent years, China has become one of Cambodia’s largest donors, sources of foreign direct investment (FDI), and trading partners. According to the Cambodian-Chinese Economic Trade and Investment 5-year plan (2013-2017), bilateral trade between the two countries is expected to be worth $4.31 billion in 2016 (Ho and Sothear 2015). Between 1994 and 2015, Chinese companies have invested in 543 projects worth a total of $10.1 billion (Sophavy 2015). Although relations between Cambodia and China date back centuries, it is in the last twenty years, during China’s economic rise, that the relationship between the countries has grown in importance, both regionally and globally. Today, China, the world’s second largest economy, finds it is beneficial to trade with and invest in Cambodia. Cambodia, of course, is grateful for the income, but there are concerns that with an export oriented economy, based largely on raw materials, Cambodia may find it difficult to move up the global value chain. As a result, Cambodia runs a negative trade balance with China. In 2011, Cambodian exports to China only totaled $184 Million, which included agricultural products, rubber, fish, timber and textiles (Heng 2012).

In evaluating the research on Chinese modernization, one repeatedly finds that it does not relativize the blind spot of the Western observer. In this small study, results of the ProtoSociology research project on Chinese modernization are presented, which are to be placed in the frame of reference of the Multiple modernities research program research group. Coming from the research program of multiple modernities (Shmuel N. Eisenstadt) and its continuation it is given a sketch about this framework of sociological theory to make theses about the Chinese modernization and the further modernization of the Chinese society. They are intended more to highlight their peculiarities. This is desirable because this modernization cannot be analysed in the same way as Western modernization. In this respect, the blind spot of the Western point of view is to be relativized. This is accompanied by a theoretical insight such that historical Western modernization cannot be generalized, nor can it be renewed. In this respect, the article provides an impetus for a new way of thinking about contemporary societies, which claims to deal with the changed preconditions of sociological theory of contemporary societies.

While ‘neoliberalization’ is increasingly used to conceptualize concrete realities of China’s economic development, it is not employed in dialectical relation with China’s prevailing developmental ideology – ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. This paper offers a fresh framework and research agenda from which to examine this relation. It argues that neoliberalization across China is a variegated process, formed and fractured by actually existing uneven state spatiality and the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) ostensibly contradictory historicization of a Marxian socialist end-state. How neoliberalization works simultaneously in/through multiple sites in China and consequently reproduces the CPC’s ideological legitimacy has become a theoretically significant question for research on geographical political economy.

Siegfried O. Wolf’s book The China-Pakistan Corridor of the Belt and Road Initiative: Concept, Context and Assessment is a valiant attempt to delve into every aspect of CPEC. Dr Wolf, the Director of Research at the South Asia Democratic Forum, in Brussels, has managed to obtain and analyse an impressively comprehensive set of empirical data concerning the implementation of the project in Pakistan; yet, the book, running to well over 300 pages, is not without flaws.

At a time when neoliberalism has become an accepted term in public debate to refer to the current state of modern societies and their political economies, Kean Birch critically analyses the conflicting theories that shape our understanding of ‘neoliberalism’.

With an ever-expanding variety of perspectives on the concept of neoliberalism, it is increasingly difficult to identify any commonalities. This book explores how different people understand neoliberalism, and the contradictions in thinking of neoliberalism as a market-based ethic, project, or order. Detailing the intellectual history of ‘neoliberal’ thought, the variety of critical approaches and the many analytical ambiguities, Kean Birch presents a new way to conceptualize contemporary political economy and offers potential avenues for future research through a judicious exploration of ‘neoliberal’ practices, processes, and institutions.

This work will be an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars, and researchers to critically assess the concept of neoliberalism across many disciplines. The book will also serve as a general introduction to a wider audience interested in the term ‘neoliberalism’, its potential pitfalls, and its contested future.

Drawing on the literature on strategic hedging and adapting it to China's use of economic diplomacy in the service of comprehensive national security goals within the regionalised foreign policy approach of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we examine China's approach to securing and expanding its interests in the Persian Gulf. To implement the trade and infrastructure connectivity goals of the BRI and to secure the continued flow of diversified energy supplies, China needs to boost relations with both regional powerhouses, Iran and Saudi Arabia, without alienating either of them or the regional hegemon, the United States. The resulting strategy of strategic hedging is based in the Chinese approach to economic diplomacy, which utilises Chinese commercial actors in the service of national strategic objectives. Relations require careful and ongoing management if China is to achieve outcomes which benefit all sides while avoiding becoming entangled in the region's intractable geopolitical problems.

One Belt One Road (OBOR) The New Silk Road is intended to strengthen ties and increase trade between Europe and China which have already grown 168 percent over the last ten years (Puls 2015). Other goals include: strengthening policy communication, increasing economic and monetary cooperation, eliminating trade barriers, and improving transportation from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea, from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean, and eventually eastern, to western and southern Asia (Szczudlik-Tatar 2013).

Chinese media predict that OBOR will eventually involve two-thirds of the world’s population and account for one-third of global GDP (Johnson 2016).

Although the US and its Western allies had long relationship with Africa in various categories of aid and development, China’s recent entry into the Dark Continent caused huge displeasure to the traditional donors. The Asian giant’s economic investment in Africa was so huge that it engaged scholars to analyze the trend from various perspectives including politics, economics, commerce, governance, human rights as well as security. The move also became an awakening or a reawakening for the US and its think tank in that, with the magnitude of rich resources under its soil, Africa is to be redefined in a more appealing fashion very unlike the Dark Continent the West had misinterpreted it for calculated hidden interests. It is based on this background that this study problematises the nature of the competition between the two giants and the implications it may hold for Africa.

This study holistically examined the startup companies in China that have quickly achieved unicorn status (that is, a $1 billion dollar plus valuation). To explore this phenomenon, the study used a two-phased case study methodology. In the first phase, the study explored the paths, positions, and processes that enabled the growth of all 68 Chinese unicorn firms. In the second phase, an in-depth cross-case analysis of two firms was performed. The two phased study surfaced nine themes and three propositions relating to how the development of Chinese unicorns is enabled by strategic alliances, strong government relationships, and founders with unique backgrounds and capabilities. This is one of the first studies to explore the unicorn phenomenon in the context of Chinese firms, and the findings from this study have laid the foundation for the study of the Chinese unicorn phenomenon .

China's rise to the status of a global power is a very complex phenomenon. Yet students of international relations (IR) are taught that a good theory should be 'parsimonious', meaning that it should explain a lot with a little. In relation to China's rise, the problem with theoretical parsimony may be not what it includes but what it leaves out. This article argues that lack of explanatory breadth and depth in connection with China's IRs demonstrates a shortcoming in mainstream IR theories such as neorealism, offensive realism and constructivism. A candidate for an IR theory which explains more with more is complexity theory (CT), which utilises a conceptual toolkit including non-linearity, feedback effects, emergent properties and complex adaptive systems. CT's toolkit, already used in the natural sciences, seems a good candidate to explain the hard-to-predict phenomena that emerge in the international sphere, but has not yet been developed into a clear theoretical lens in IR. In this article, the rise of China is analysed through the lenses of three mainstream theories and CT in order to assess the strengths and shortcomings of each approach and to suggest how CT's 'conceptual toolkit' might be utilised to flesh out existing IR theories in order to explain China's rise more fully.

China’s stock markets are barely 25 years old however, they already boast more members than China’s communist party, “90 million individual investors, compared with 87.8 million members of the Communist Party” (Faux 2015).


First, this paper will explore investor behaviors which caused volatility in the Chinese stock market. Next, it will explore government intervention to support the stock market. Finally, it will explore the implications a Chinese stock market crash could have on Chinese domestic and foreign economies.

Through a framework drawn from Karl Polanyi’s substantivist theorization of economic practices, this paper evaluates the quest for equitable urbanization in Chongqing, a major city-region in southwestern China. Illuminating the tensions arising from two interrelated reforms, namely the ambitious attempt to construct 40 million m2 of public rental housing between 2010 to 2012 and the large-scale drive to ensure peasant migrants enjoy equal access to social benefits as current urban residents, the paper explains how the quest for equitable urbanization magnifies two nationwide dimensions of institutionalized uneven development, namely 1) the caste-like categorization of populations according to ‘urban’ and ‘rural’; and 2) the coastal bias in national economic development. The paper concludes that this state-driven pursuit of spatial egalitarianism in Chongqing expresses the dialecticism of economic development in China: it is a social ‘counter movement’ against the effects of an uneven spatiality that was instituted to drive and deepen the marketization of Chinese society.

Elinizdeki kitap, günümüz uluslararası sisteminde, Türkiye’nin
ekonomik entegrasyonlar anlamında hem Avrasya Bölgesinde, hem
Avrupa Bölgesinde oluşan ekonomik entegrasyonlarda yer almasının
AB’ye üyelik sürecine bir engel ya da tehdit oluşturmayacağını aksine
Avrupa Birliği kendi Doğusuna doğru (Batı Avrasya) gelişirken dünyada
özgün bir Avrasya ülkesi olan Türkiye'nin bu özgünlüğünü kullanarak
bölgede oluşan ekonomik entegrasyonlara dahil olmasının, mümkün ve
zorunlu olduğunu ayrıca, bu alternatiflerin bölge ve uluslararası sistemde
barışa katkı sağlayacağını savunan master tezimden kitap haline
getirilmiştir.
Tezin kitap haline ve yayınlanma aşamasına getirilmesinde büyük
desteği olan ve yol gösteren tez danışmanım Yeditepe Üniversitesi
İngilizce Uluslararası İlişkiler ve Siyaset Bilimi Dr. Öğretim Üyesi Melih
GÖRGÜN’e sonsuz teşekkür ediyorum.
Ayrıca, master ve doktora öğrencisi olma onuruna da eriştiğim jüri
danışmanım değerli Siyaset Bilimci Prof. Dr. Cemil OKTAY hocamıza
ve diğer jüri danışmanlarım, Prof. Dr. Aykut B. ARIKAN ve Dr. Öğretim
Üyesi Bilgen SÜTÇÜOĞLU KARAKUŞ’a teşekkür ediyorum.
Bu zorlu ve uzun soluklu çalışmada, beni daima motive eden
oğlum Öncü’ye, Sevgili eşime, tüm dostlarıma, master ve doktora dersleri
aldığım öğretim üyelerine, Kriter Yayınevi ve KobiEfor ekibine, bu
araştırmaya destek veren sanayici ve iş insanı dostlarıma teşekkür
ediyorum.

This thesis assesses the social-welfare implications of modifications to the post transfer distribution of income, in the context of welfare maximising policy design. Both the inequality-distributional efficiency and inequality-growth relationship are assessed. An Atkinson social welfare function is employed in a novel fashion to model the inequality distributional efficiency relationship, including direct effects that result from the concavity of the personal utility function, and external losses operating via positional income effects. This analysis produces estimates of the social welfare losses from inequality across a data set of 137 countries, where the unweighted average of total losses is found to be equivalent to be 47% of GNI. The equality-growth relationship is analysed from the standpoint of both endogenous growth theory and post-Keynesian theories of demand and investment. The relationships between the functional and personal distribution of income and key macroeconomic variables including the rate of savings, and physical and human capital accumulation are assessed. Crucially, these relationships are found to be highly modifiable by economic policy and structural reform, and in theory, no growth–equality trade off need exist. On the contrary, equality may be growth promoting at moderate to high inequality levels. Combined with the large static welfare losses from inequality uncovered in this analysis, the welfare optimum level of inequality is likely to be close to the level associated with distributional efficiency maximisation. This is likely to be a very low level of inequality in comparison to existing levels in most countries and regions, and large welfare losses result from levels of inequality significantly above this level.

Contemporary impressions of Taiwan’s relations with Southeast Asia tend to focus on flows of labor, capital, tourism, and marriage. Countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand carry the impression that they are the origins of cheap, sometimes easily exploitable, migrant labor for employers in Taiwan. Many people in Taiwan also see the former two countries as sources of brides for lower-income men. These same countries, along with Cambodia and, to a lesser degree, Malaysia, are locations where Taiwanese capital is invested in factories for low-cost labor, proximity to Taiwan and China, and the relative absence of political contentiousness for being Taiwanese. With the advent of cheap air travel, Taiwan and Southeast Asia also offer the middle class in these areas options for quick holiday getaways. These interactions and the condescension toward Southeast Asia that sometimes accompany them belie the rich history of interactions that Taiwan and Southeast Asia share.

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This article traces the history of Shanghai’s higher education institutions during the early People’s Republic. Initially, the Communists had many advantages in Shanghai’s universities, but the early political campaigns of the new regime led to a radicalization of domestic politics that placed intellectuals and their past activities under greater scrutiny. After encountering difficulties and confusion in implementing the Thought Reform campaign, the Communist Party emphasized the Three Antis
campaign against corruption to buttress the goals of self-criticism and ideological transformation. Afterward, institutional reorganization of universities along Soviet lines proceeded as planned, with the outward support of students and staff, but, recognizing this as feigned transformation, the party remained wary of and frustrated by Shanghai’s intellectuals in subsequent years. Therefore, rather than representing the successful transition away from bourgeois ideology, the Thought Reform campaign instead signaled a new dynamic of mutual distrust between the party and intellectuals in Shanghai.

The idea of China’s co-operation with the Central and Eastern European countries in the sixteen-plus-one format (16+1 Group) rather than bilaterally (including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia) first came forth in December 2011 when China and Poland signed a declaration on strategic-partnership relations.  This idea was formalised in April 2012 by China’s unilateral declaration on Twelve Measures for Promoting Friendly Cooperation with Central and Eastern European Countries.  Despite a few summits hold and a few plurilateral declarations within the framework of the 16+1 Group signed, the project did not materialise until 2016 when China first entered into strategic partnership (along with a set of concrete agreements) with Czechia in March, and in June entered into comprehensive strategic partnership with Poland as the largest country of the 16+1 Group.
One should not be mistaken to think, however, that Poland and China move into unknown territory by signing a few agreements potentially opening doors to intensified economic, infrastructural, and transportation-related co-operation (which will be essential for the One Belt One Road Initiative).  In retrospect of the last one hundred fifty years, just the opposite is true.  Only last thirty years saw some retardation of Sino-Polish relations after Poland had found itself in the Western sphere of influence.  Since 1880s, Poles played a key role in the then Russian Empire’s endeavour to bring about the Russian vision of the New Silk from about century ago, resulting in that a large Polish community lived in Harbin between the 1900s and the 1940s.  In the interbellum period, independent Poland concluded trade treaty with the Beiyang government in 1928, replaced by the trade treaty with Kuomintang’s government concluded in 1929, and since 1930s Poland also had to deal with Manchukuo’s government because of Polish community still living in Harbin.
After WW2, within the block of communist countries, Sino-Polish relations were very intense.  Between 1940s and the 1970s Poland’s and China’s economies were complementary and the volume of trade between two countries grew multi-fold in the 1950s.  In 1951 two countries established still-existing Shipping Joint Stock Company which was the first joint-venture in the history of post-war China.  In 1956, thanks to Chinese leaders’ veto, Soviet Union’s leaders did not dare to military intervene in Poland which, as a result, regained full sovereignty as to its internal socio-economic policies.  During the hardship of the 1980s, Chinese government lend Poles harassed by Reagan administration’s economic sanctions a hand by extending a trade credit to Polish government and by supplying food.  Finally the backbone of Sino-Polish economic relations was set up yet in late 1980s when two countries concluded agreements on (i) civil aviation, (ii) avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion, and (iii) protection of foreign investment.
Now, thanks to its geographical situation, Poland is a key to the realisations of Halford Mackinder’s 1904’s vision of the creation of Eurasia (heartland) which would reverse the results of (i) the Age of Discovery in the global scale, likely leading to the economic marginalisation of North America, and (ii) economic dualism in Europe split by the river of Elbe, likely leading to income-equalisation between Western Europe and  Eastern Europe which has not been the case since the 16th century.  Poland is predestined to be the new Silk Road’s hub bridging railway routes coming to Europe from the East (via China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus) and from the South (via Balkans, Hungary, Slovakia).
However, current Poland’s government’s stance on the new Silk Road  project is rather disappointing.  Poland’s membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as the only country’s from the Central and Eastern Europe region was inherited from the previous cabinet and, apart from that, efforts to facilitate the development of the new Silk Road on the Polish territory have so far been very mediocre.  The conclusion of a rather symbolic comprehensive strategic partnership was accompanied with three agreements resolving only minor issues, including (i) mutual recognition of academic degrees and diplomas in higher education, yet the signed agreement was very general and neither set up any mechanism of automatic recognition nor covered professional qualifications, (ii) plans of cultural co-operation until 2019, and (iii) the exemption of international air transportation services from value added tax.  Altogether, for the time being, the prospects for the development of the new Silk Road’s hub in Poland look rather dim.  Poland’s current government’s allegiance to the idea of Trans-Pacific alliance remains strong, and  policy-makers remain to look Westwards only.  They seem to be incapable of scenario-thinking and, at least at present, seem to reject the hand reached out by China.