China Economic Interests in the Baltic States: Challenges and Opportunities

The Baltic states (as the other EU countries) in the last several years receive serious attention from China state owned and private business. For a long period of time this interest was seen great economic opportunity for the Baltic states (at least in the public discourse). For example, Baltic states have actively worked in order to include their sea ports and other transit infrastructure in the China proposed "Belt and Road initiative". On the other hand, the last year seen shift in this clearly positive attitude. Chinese economic expansion is seen in the more balanced way, as both the source of opportunities and challenges. This development could be seen as the part of rise of global tensions between the West and China. The paper will analyse existing Chinese economic involvement in the Baltics, differences between three states and transformation of their governments attitudes to this issue.