On January 17, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe completed a five-day trip to northern and southeastern Europe. After visiting Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, he traveled to Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania. His trip to the Baltic and Balkan regions is part of Tokyo’s attempts to establish itself as a global economic and political leader and increase its sphere of influence through the use of soft power and use of its financial prowess as a diplomatic instrument. lever.
During your trip to the Balkans, a few points require special attention. The least important, but also perhaps the most entertaining, visit was Abe’s visit to Romania, which would have been a boring diplomatic success for both sides, complete with even more boring press releases if the prime minister Romanian, Mihai Tudose, had not resigned that evening. before Abe’s arrival, thus leaving his Japanese counterpart unattended. The embarrassment for the Japanese guests and for the Romanian hosts was further increased by the fact that it was the first visit of a Japanese Prime Minister to Bucharest, therefore a historic event for both countries and a proud badge for the Romanian government. It helped somewhat that Bucharest was the very last stop on Abe’s trip to the Baltic and Balkan regions, as his official meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis was brought forward 24 hours to ease some of the embarrassment .
Abe’s visit to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, was the one that kicked off his Balkan tour. Bulgaria currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council and, as such, plays a strategic role in Tokyo’s hopes of seeing the Japan-EU Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) finally concluded in 2017 and which should enter into force by 2019 – ratified more quickly by all 27 Member States. The EPA is an important step in Tokyo’s attempts to penetrate further into Europe’s market of nearly 600 million people and align itself with Seoul on the free trade deal front. South Korea signed a ALE with the EU in 2009, entered into force in 2011 and ratified by all EU members in 2015. Japan is the EU’s second largest Asian trading partner, after China, and in this sense, the EPA constitutes a crucial economic element in Abe’s grand plan for revitalizing the Japanese economy.
Among the six stops Abe made during this trip, his visit to Serbia deserves special attention. Serbia is the only non-EU state participating in Abe’s latest tour and stands out from the others for several reasons. Firstly because unlike the five other countries which hosted the first visits of a Japanese Prime Minister, Serbia was already visited more than 30 years ago, at the time when Yugoslavia was still a reality. In this sense, Abe’s visit to Belgrade was not like his visit to the other five states, but rather an attempt to revitalize old relations.
Furthermore, the purported aim of Abe’s visit to the five EU states was to encourage faster ratification of the EPA by fleshing out the bones of the deal. Abe brought a delegation of hand-picked Japanese business leaders who wasted no time in laying the foundation for future business infrastructure. However, the Serbian part of Abe’s trip turned out to be rather strange. Since Serbia is not a member of the EU, its inclusion could have no connection with the EPA, and the common concern expressed over the nuclear threat from North Korea was nothing more than a symbolic act solidarity expected in such situations.
The real reason for Abe’s visit to Belgrade had more to do with the close relations established over the past five years between Serbia and China.
China-Serbia relations
To understand this, we need to take a quick look at Sino-Serbian relations and their recent developments. Serbia is an important step in China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – the modern Silk Road – proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. BRI envisions a China-dominated network that would reach and connect Asia. , Europe, the Middle East and even parts of Africa, the Americas and Australia in a complex trading system. This vision, if realized, would allow Beijing to increase and expand its global political and economic influence.
Under the BRI, China has in recent years begun to make significant investments in Serbia aimed at creating regional infrastructure facilitating access for Chinese products to European markets, particularly Germany. The Chinese plan to use the Greek port of Piraeus, near the capital Athens, currently controlled and operated by Chinese company COSCO, to move goods across the Balkans and to the EU. Given Piraeus’ relative proximity to the Suez Canal, compared, for example, to the northernmost ports of Rotterdam or Hamburg, the Balkan route appears to be a practical and attractive option for Beijing’s plan to expand the scope of the BRI at the heart of the EU. . To this end, China is now investing heavily in Serbia’s rail and road networks, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into building, repairing and rebuilding bridges and roads – many of which have remained in a devastating state ever since. NATO bombings 20 years ago – or creating new road infrastructure, such as building a $740 million highway that would connect the capital Belgrade to the coastal town of Bar in Montenegro. But Beijing’s flagship project is the $3 billion investment project to build a 350-kilometer high-speed rail link between the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and Belgrade.
For Serbia, Chinese investments – even if they come with visible conditions (for example, the interest on loans from the Chinese Exim Bank depends on the share of participation of Chinese companies in the construction process) – are not only welcome, but It is also perhaps the only low interest option Belgrade has. As a non-EU member, the Serbian state cannot benefit from either EU structural funds or low-interest preferential loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). . China, on the other hand, is only too happy to extend its generous financial support and offer loans well below market interest rates for terms of 20 or 30 years, and to invest finances, resources and expertise in building world-class regional transportation infrastructure. in the Western Balkans. Beyond economic support, Beijing is also reaffirming its political support for Belgrade, by siding with Serbia against the EU and the United States, and by refusing to recognize Kosovo, for example.
Japan’s response
It is this Chinese attention to the Western Balkans that was the main motive for the Japanese Prime Minister’s recent visit to Serbia. Tokyo is desperate to counter the rise of Chinese soft power by opening its own stock exchange and extending its political influence to a small Balkan country. By promising to invest in crucial energy projects, such as building a desulfurization unit for the Nikola Tesla power plant, investing in Serbia’s pharmaceutical, agricultural and IT industries, or using the expertise of the Japanese Agency of international cooperation to identify potential areas When it comes to economic cooperation, Japan hopes to counter some of the effects of China’s recent economic foray into the Western Balkans. Tokyo hopes to achieve this by increasing its diplomatic role in the region, including courting Serbia and other Western Balkan states to its side. In this context, during his visit to Serbia, Abe proposed a “Western Balkans Cooperation Initiative”, part of which provides for Japan to appoint a special ambassador for the Western Balkans to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Abe also offered to advocate for Serbia at the EU to speed up the accession process.
It is unclear, however, to what extent Abe will be able to curb China’s incursion into the Western Balkans, or even to what extent the EU itself will be able to control it. To begin with, Serbia’s chances of joining the EU in the short term are far from slim. Just as in the case of Turkey and other countries waiting in the EU vestibule, the Serbian population is gradually becoming disillusioned with the prospects of EU membership and is experiencing “membership fatigue”. » more and more pronounced. For example, more and more Serbs now believe that EU membership will be bad for the country, and only a small number of dreamers believe this will happen by 2025. While full membership to the EU seems more and more distant, more and more elusive, and more and more illusory, Chinese investments are here now and are real.
Despite the fact that China and Japan both have huge sums of funds – by Balkan regional standards – that are earmarked for development, China’s portfolio will be difficult for Tokyo to match, if only because of the first-mover advantage enjoyed by Beijing. Besides economic considerations, China and Serbia also enjoy common political sympathy and mutual support, particularly on issues such as Kosovo and Chinese separatist movements in Tibet and Xinjiang. During the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit by Western missiles. NATO has always maintained that the strike was a mistake, but it is widely believed that it was retaliation against the Chinese for passing intelligence to the Milosevic regime. The NATO bombings are not yet entirely forgotten in Serbia, and memories of Chinese camaraderie and support are treasured. These are emotional connections that are difficult for Tokyo to match, nor are they politically feasible for Japan to try.
On the other hand, China’s focus on Serbia under the BRI is also not entirely clear, even to specialists who closely monitor Chinese involvement in the region. Serbia’s road and rail infrastructure system could eventually be improved, but Chinese goods will still need to reach Belgrade from Piraeus. This requires going through Macedonia – another non-EU state – or Bulgaria. Neither country has benefited from Chinese investment attention comparable to that given to Serbia. Furthermore, Chinese goods using the proposed route would have to travel from an EU member (Greece) to non-EU countries with pre-accession agreements not yet approved (Macedonia and Serbia), in order to enter another EU member (Hungary). . It’s not clear whether these messy logistics are worth it.
Although the details of China and Japan’s respective strategies in the Western Balkans remain unclear, the region represents a potential battleground for a number of global players – China, Japan, the EU and potentially Russia and the United States – seeking to flex their positions. their soft muscles (and maybe more). The hope is that this competition could prove beneficial to the region, but it also risks destabilizing the Balkans and plunging it into greater turbulence.
Liubomir K. Topaloff, Ph.D., is an associate professor of political science in the School of Political Science and Economics at Meiji University. For 2017-2018, he is a visiting professor at Boston College.