Description
This paper provides a comparative analysis of Sino-Lithuanian and Sino-Czech relations to address the following question: why did Lithuania withdraw from what was originally known as the 16+1 framework of cooperation between China and Central and Eastern Europe, while Czechia remained, despite repeated statements of intent to exit by political elites in both countries? Existing literature emphasises the agency of Lithuanian and Czech political elites and their grievances regarding the limited economic benefits generated by the framework, Russia-China cooperation, and China’s human rights record (i.e., direct economic, security, and normative considerations), while paying less attention to the role of indirect factors, particularly supply-chain dynamics, in shaping elite rationales for remaining in or exiting the 16+1. As a result, existing explanations do not fully account for the divergence in the two states’ foreign policy decisions.
To address this gap, the paper examines the broader geo-economic structures that both constrain and enable political agency, focusing on the countries’ positions within Germany-CEE-China automotive production networks and the extent to which these positions informed elite attitudes towards the 16+1. Particular attention is paid to the ‘Lithuanian effect’ (i.e., China’s weaponisation of supply chains against local automotive component suppliers following Lithuania’s withdrawal from the framework and the opening of Taiwan’s representative office under the designation ‘Taiwanese’ shortly thereafter). The paper explores not only how this episode influenced the views of Czech political elites after Lithuania’s exit, but also the extent to which supply-chain considerations shaped elite attitudes prior to that.
The empirical analysis focuses primarily on structural factors, linking the study’s independent variable (i.e., states’ positions within the core–semi-periphery–periphery structure of the global economy) to its dependent variable, namely a specific foreign policy decision. At the same time, it accounts for variations in foreign policy outcomes that cannot be explained by structural factors alone, examining instead how structural and agential factors interact to shape foreign policy choices.