EARL Researcher Nina Pejič gives a lecture at Zheijang University

Nina Pejič attended the International Youth Forum on the Belt and Road between 28-29th December 2017, organized by the Zhejiang University Academy of International Strategy and Law and International Academy of Belt and Road in Hangzhou, People's Republic of China. As the co-author of the publication “Young Belt and Road – Opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe”,she was invited to give a lecture titled “Challenges of Political Cooperation of One Belt and Road Initiative in the Post-communist Countries of Central and Southeast Europe”, in which she discussed the development of clientelist/patronage networks and their implications for the success of the Belt and Road initiative in these two regions. 

The lecture argued – using different foreign policy models – that foreign policies in the mentioned countries are a result of actions by the countries’ top leaders that are relying on informal networks, personal connections in creating national policies and personal appointments for the consolidation of their own political and economic gains. The main finding of the lecture was that the consequence of patronage networks is a lack of national foreign policies towards China. Implications of this finding for the Belt and Road are a lack of a strategy for implementation of Belt and Road projects and a lack of political will to create such a strategy, a lack of the long-term approach to the Chinese investments, public disinformation and public distrust. The Chinese initiative can therefore expect to face such problems while dealing with individual countries in Central and Southeast Europe.