CHINA-CEEC COOPERATION IN EDUCATION AND SCIENCE: DO MUTUAL PERCEPTIONS AND POLITICAL CONTEXTS METTER?

Abstract

The “16+1” format has become one of the most debated regional collaboration frameworks developed within the “Belt and Road” Initiative (B&R). The format is still into the political agenda despite the fact that some of the Eastern European countries have questioned its reasonability since other are ready to continue expanding opportunities for win-win relations. The scope of interactions within the mechanism is organized around 3 axes: trade, investment, and people-to-people exchanges. The latter promotes the facilitation of mutual trust, consolidation, intercultural understanding and the exchange of knowledge between the PRC and CEEC, where science and education sector is an important instrument, which is leading the promotion of people-to-people exchanges. The aim of the paper is to investigate student mobility and academic exchanges of tertiary education institutions as an instrument for promoting more extensive cooperation between CEEC and the PRC, taking into consideration the opportunities given by the work of the 16+1 format. Special attention is paid to describing the main challenges and prospects for collaboration in the fields of science and education with the emphasis on the different perceptions of threats caused by political context. The study is based on the analysis of existing research, statistics and data collected from 15 in-depth semi-structured interviews with people from the PRC and 5 CEEC countries involved in PRC-CEEC exchanges in 2019. Other 5 in-depth semi-structured interviews were done in 2021 in order to check the situation in cooperation during Covid-19 Pandemics as well as while taking in account political challenges, which the format 16+1 is facing.