The East Is Red…Again! How the Specters of Communism and Russia Shape Central and Eastern European Views of China

During the past decade, China has rapidly emerged as a major player in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Will it divide Europe? Might these formerly communist countries align themselves again with a communist superpower to their east? Or does their past experience of Russia and communism generate suspicions of China? This article explores what public opinion data from a fall 2020 survey of six CEE countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia) can teach us about the drivers of CEE attitudes toward China. It suggests that China has become a “second Eastern power” beyond Russia against which many people in the CEE have come to define themselves. Although there are large differences between CEE publics in their views of China, individual-level self-identifications with the East or West, and attitudes toward the communist past and communism today consistently shape views of both Russia and China. Russia looms large for all in the CEE, but especially for Latvia and Poland, whose views of China appear to be almost completely mediated through attitudes toward their giant Russian neighbor. We conclude with thoughts on the implications of these findings about the structure of CEE public opinion toward China for the future of the “16+1” mechanism and CEE-China relations more broadly.