People’s Republic of China in the Baltic States – A Book Review

People’s Republic of China in the Baltic States
Edited by Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova and Kārlis Bukovskis, Riga, Latvian Institute of International Affairs, 2023, 154 pp., ISBN 978-9934-567-67-4

This collection of analytic essays describing political/security, economic, and people-to-people interactions between Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides a welcome and useful elucidation of similarities and differences among the Baltic states. It also identifies (albeit without specifically doing so) the kinds of challenges facing all small and mid-sized countries in their dealings with much larger powers. Asymmetries of scale in the size of populations, firms, government bureaucracies, and other capacities make it difficult to identify and exploit opportunities, maintain multifaceted relationships, and manage the deluge and sometimes manipulative intent of initiatives from the larger partner. Small state governments must play a larger brokering and facilitating role than is true in bigger economies because sub-national actors have limited knowledge and capacity. This is certainly the case with respect to Baltic state interactions with China. Moreover, as these essays make clear, disparities in size and national objectives create vulnerabilities and dependencies that can be manipulated by the larger partner. A recurring leitmotif of the book is that China attempts to exploit dependencies for political reasons.

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