Comrade, Customer, Client, or Critic? European States’ Engagements with China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Written by
Morten Skumsrud Andersen
Senior Research Fellow
Wrenn Yennie Lindgren
Senior Research Fellow
Ole Jacob Sending
Research Professor, Head of Center for Geopolitics
Margrete Seiersnes-Killingland
Junior Research Fellow
Ed.
Summary:
Why do some European states embrace China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), while others keep it at arm’s length or actively oppose it?
States like Greece and Hungary have welcomed BRI investments as a political counterweight to Brussels, while Germany and others have remained skeptical, despite their economic ties to China. To capture the variation in how states respond to the BRI, we draw on theories of incomplete contracts and relational contracting, which foreground recipient states’ agency in negotiating with a more powerful counterpart.
Here, what shapes the engagement is the character of the relations between the parties rather than the content of the contracts. We propose four ideal-typical relations of Comrade, Client, Customer, and Critic, each associated with distinct policy behaviors and underlying drivers, to assess how the BRI interacts with domestic politics and historical and existing relations.
We argue that the BRI does not necessarily change existing alignments, but rather that it may reinforce or be adapted to them—and that such changes are contingent on domestic and institutional recalibrations. The proposed ideal-typical patterns help us understand the different, specific trajectories that emerge in the four studied cases—Greece, Poland, Hungary, and Germany—and how they are mediated by domestic politics.
Further, the ideal-typical relations proposed here can help us assess the political and economic significance of the BRI while also contributing to broader debates about possible changes in China’s global position and the building blocks of an emerging international order.
States like Greece and Hungary have welcomed BRI investments as a political counterweight to Brussels, while Germany and others have remained skeptical, despite their economic ties to China. To capture the variation in how states respond to the BRI, we draw on theories of incomplete contracts and relational contracting, which foreground recipient states’ agency in negotiating with a more powerful counterpart.
Here, what shapes the engagement is the character of the relations between the parties rather than the content of the contracts. We propose four ideal-typical relations of Comrade, Client, Customer, and Critic, each associated with distinct policy behaviors and underlying drivers, to assess how the BRI interacts with domestic politics and historical and existing relations.
We argue that the BRI does not necessarily change existing alignments, but rather that it may reinforce or be adapted to them—and that such changes are contingent on domestic and institutional recalibrations. The proposed ideal-typical patterns help us understand the different, specific trajectories that emerge in the four studied cases—Greece, Poland, Hungary, and Germany—and how they are mediated by domestic politics.
Further, the ideal-typical relations proposed here can help us assess the political and economic significance of the BRI while also contributing to broader debates about possible changes in China’s global position and the building blocks of an emerging international order.
- Published year: 2026
- Full version: Read the article here (open access)
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksag127
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Page count: 13
- Language: English
- Volume: 6
- Booklet: 3
- Journal: Global Studies Quarterly