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The China-Central and Eastern European Countries (C-CEEC) framework, launched amid the European debt crisis in the early 2010s, serves as a vehicle for economic, political, and socio-cultural cooperation between China and the CEE region. Formalized in 2012 as the "16+1" (later "17+1" with Greece’s participation), the initiative initially included 16 CEE nations: 11 from the European Union (EU)–Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania (subsequently withdrew), Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, and five non-EU states–Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. Multi-level cooperation is facilitated and coordinated by a Beijing-based Secretariat with representatives from C-CEEC member states.

The C-CEEC’s objectives center on fostering trade, investment, and infrastructure development. The framework facilitates CEE countries to attract Chinese investments in transport, energy, and technology, and to diversify export destinations. Integrating this framework into China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative also advances the country’s goals of increasing its exports and geopolitical influence in Europe. Chinese enterprises have invested over $16 billion in CEE countries (2012–2019), while CEE investments in China totaled about $1.5 billion. The China-CEE Investment Fund, launched in 2012 and later expanded, supports joint infrastructure projects, often utilizing Chinese equipment. A Chinese state-owned shipping company notably purchased a majority share of Greece’s port of Piraeus, Europe’s second-largest container port. For some states like Hungary and Serbia, Chinese funding fills investment gaps left by the EU and drives growth in ICT and manufacturing sectors.

Despite these promising developments, the framework faces significant economic and security challenges which deserves further study. I will investigate what are the concerns raised by CEE countries on their massive and increasing trade deficits with China, as well as slowing or disproportionate Chinese investments in various CEE states. I will analyze how the United States-China trade “war” starting in 2018 and subsequent technological conflict has divided CEE/European perspectives on cooperation with China, particularly on data security regarding the use of Chinese digital infrastructure, and Chinese adherence to EU rules concerning environmental and procurement standards. I will also scrutinize the extent to which the Russia-Ukraine war and Iran’s war with the U.S. and Israel affects CEE relations with China, in terms of alignments in foreign security and economic policies. As the CEE region is a core area of interest to China, as well as Russia, the U.S., and the rest of Europe, Beijing’s continuing involvement in the C-CEEC and the framework’s ability to overcome challenges merit our attention.

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This paper studies the Chinese ethnic policy and cultural ecological imbalances in Xinjiang. This paper examines the adversities of China’s governance strategies in Xinjiang which can be seen as  various mechanisms of political control to restructure and reshape socio-cultural landscapes and ecological balance. This study focuses on Xinjiang both as  geopolitical and historical continuum of Central Asian region. The study examines the intersection of various methodological approaches like spatial reconfiguration,  demographic engineering,  cultural assimilation and environmental degradation. 

China’s Ethnic policy in Xinjiang is primarily focused on national building, securitization,  economic restructuring  and cultural  standardisation.  This led to adverse impact on minority ethnicities prominently part of pastoralism and oasis dependent agriculture.  The state promoted development models have intensified pressure on fragile ecosystems contributing to ecological exhaustion and imbalance. Here, the concept of ‘cultural ecological imbalance’ is applied to understand the power hierarchies. It is eroding traditional knowledge systems as well as exploitation natural resources. 

This paper used the combination of  methodological frameworks from political ecology, critical geopolitics and geoeconomy. Ethnographic insights from secondary sources.  The central argument of the paper is China’s Ethnic policy in Xinjiang is characterized by militarization in the name of securitization,  cultural assimilation and disruptions in traditional economic processes.  This led to weakened balance between culture and livelihoods of ethnic minorities.  This paper concludes that the China’s governance strategies like demographic engineering,  increased forced labor and camps, expansion of colonial agriculture,  surveillance and restrictions on cultural expression led to large scale ecological degradation.

This paper coincides with the conference theme by finding that reconfiguration of space as power contestations. Societies are restructuralised along  side if cultural landscapes.  This paper tries to fill the literature gap by following interdisciplinary approach including political science,  human geography and environmental studies.  The findings are relevant to contemporary issues and challenges faced by Xinjiang and it calls for rethinking of governance and development models so that integration of cultural diversity,  local knowledge systems and ecological sustainability. 

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The paper draws on historical institutionalism to examine how asymmetric institutional structures between China and Kazakhstan shape the outcomes of BRI-led infrastructure development. It uses the concept of asymmetrical interdependence to explain unequal power relations and their implications for state-society relations. Broadly, situating the study within discussions of how Central Eurasia is evolving as an interconnected region, the paper aims to explain how BRI-led infrastructure development is reshaping Kazakhstan’s strategic space. This primarily includes key infrastructure corridors across the border region between Kazakhstan and China, which are central to connectivity. The paper aims to analyse, first, how these developments shape state-society relations through local responses; second, how infrastructure initiatives highlight the asymmetrical institutional structure and power relations between Kazakhstan and China.

The paper further argues that these power relations generate new socio-spatial vulnerabilities. The large-scale connectivity projects reconfigure not only economic geographies but also social hierarchies and local perceptions of risk and security. Therefore, the flagship Chinese connectivity initiative- BRI- can be seen not merely as an economic initiative but as a strategic instrument through which China seeks to stabilise its western periphery, particularly in relation to Xinjiang and transnational ethnic linkages involving Uyghur communities, thereby embedding security logics within development practices.

The paper further examines how China’s BRI interacts with Kazakhstan’s domestic infrastructure development program, Nurly Zhol, highlighting the 2016 alignment between the two. This alignment shows how Kazakhstan balances external projects with its own development priorities. By examining the connection between infrastructure development and power hierarchies, the paper locates large connectivity projects like the BRI within increased dependence of Kazakhstan on external actors, which shapes its position in Central Eurasia.

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Monograph chapter part of my PhD thesis

Thesis research question: How regime security shapes China's foreign policy in Central Asia

This chapter is the second analytical section of the thesis, in which I discuss the connection between China's own domestic supply line concerns and its foreign policy in Central Asia.

The root cause is the 'Malacca Strait Dilemma', a maritime channel in the Indo-Pacific, through which most of China's trade flows, including vital imports of energy, agricultural goods, precious metals, and rare earths. China is not self-sufficient in many key areas, so in the eventuality of a conflict between the US and China, the closure of the Malacca Strait (which is also surrounded by US military bases) would essentially represent an existential threat in a long, drawn out conflict.

The Chinese elite are very aware of this dilemma, and the concept was already introduced back at the turn of the millennium by then president Jiang Zemin in a speech to the National Congress. He emphasized the need for China to prioritizing building trade routes elsewhere, so as not to be fully reliant on maritime trade in the Indo-Pacific. This is the backdrop of China's 'Great Western Development Program' and later, the Belt and Road Initiative, first announced at Nazarbayev University in 2013. In an attempt to recreate the classical silk routes, China seeks to connect itself to the important European market by creating new trade routes, logistical hubs, extraction mines, and pipelines in Central Asia to de-risk their overall trade-flow. This gives an alternative dimension to the typical framing of Chinese infrastructure projects in Central Asia.

This chapter is based on CCP primary literature (white papers, speeches, China-Central Asia events), and from my own interviews conducted in China in late 2025 with prominent scholars at Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Northwest University, and Lanzhou University - and also a previous fieldwork conducted in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 2024.

The chapter is not completed yet, but will be at the time of the conference, my deadline being the end of May.