Sino-Romania Relations Under the Framework of Relations Between China and CEECS Countries: A Perspective of Local Cooperation

- As the third country to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, friendship and companionship have been the fundamental characteristics of Sino-Romania relations in the past 70 years. However, this good tendency of the relations between the two countries has subtly changed in the past decade, especially fading from other Central and Eastern Europe countries received more attention from China and even considered China’s top partners in this region. Local cooperation is the unique feature of cooperation under “16+1 cooperation” framework and makes up the asymmetry of market sizes between two sides, providing another perspective for examining relations and exchanges between countries. Compared with the Czech Republic, whose population size and gross domestic product are close to Romania, it further highlights the lagging characteristics of local cooperation between China and Romania. In order to strengthen local cooperation and then comprehensively promote Sino-Romania relations and “16+1 cooperation”, it is necessary to promote Romania to host the “16+1” local leaders meeting as soon as possible, fully make synergy between “16+1” local cooperation and the Romanian regional development strategy, continue to support Romania to establish much more new cooperation mechanism or platform under the framework of “16+1 Cooperation”, set up and select a fixed partner city to advance local cooperation as an example, construct a multinational cooperation platform within the framework of Belt and Road Initiative, and strengthen people-to-people bond and cultural exchange.