6th Summit of China & CEEC: Deepening cooperation over the past 5 years

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Europe

The Sixth Summit between China and Central and Eastern European Countries will be held in the Hungarian capital of Budapest on November 27th this year. The 16+1 format is an initiative by China aimed at intensifying and expanding cooperation with 11 EU member states and 5 Balkan nations.

The 16+1 countries are China, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Macedonia. Cooperation fields include investment, transport, finance, science, education and culture.

The annual summit plays a guiding role in 16+1 cooperation by drawing up annual guidelines, identifying key deliverables and resolving outstanding issues in the course of cooperation in a timely fashion.

The first 16+1 summit was held in Warsaw, Poland, in 2012. At the event, the Chinese premier announced a comprehensive initiative on cooperation with 16 Central and Eastern European countries, entitled China's "Twelve Measures for Promoting Friendly Cooperation with Central and Eastern European Countries", which is the framework document for the 16+1 format.

At the 2013 Bucharest summit in Romania, the group agreed to provide more support to small and medium-sized enterprises and offer more room to play an "active role" in bilateral trade. China reached an agreement with Hungary and Serbia to jointly build a railway between the latter two countries.

During the 2014 Belgrade summit in Serbia, China, Serbia, Hungary and Macedonia agreed to build an express line, which links the Greek port of Piraeus in the south and the Hungarian capital of Budapest in the north.

At the 2015 Suzhou summit in China, participants stated their readiness to formulate the Medium-Term Agenda for Cooperation between China and CEEC, taking the China-EU 2020 Strategic Agenda for Cooperation as the guideline document for China-EU relations.

On November 5th 2016, the fifth Summit of China and CEEC was held in the Latvian capital of Riga. Baltic Sea countries, including Latvia, expressed their hope to join the Belt and Road Initiative because the region is an important logistics hub.

CEE nations, located in a geographic linkage between China and Europe, are of vital importance for China to enhance its relations with Europe as a whole. The economies of CEE countries, complementary to China's economy, have witnessed an increasing number of their products being exported to China.