RICHARD TURCSANYI: Anatomy of Sino-Czech Fallout - Lessons for Europe

In today’s episode, we take a look at the recent Sino-Czech fallout, which highlights some very important dynamics happening between China and countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The fascinating Czech case has a lot to teach us about the agency of the local politicians, personal interests and dynamics, as well as the general fact that the narratives that come through media reporting are often oversimplified.

We will discuss it with our guest, who has long been involved in a discussion on China’s presence in Central and Eastern Europe, as a think tank expert and an academic, who knows Czech-China relations inside out and warned of the possible fallout in relations before it happened.

Richard Turcsanyi is the programme director at an independent think tank, the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, an assistant professor at Mendel University in Brno, and a Key Researcher at Palacky University in Olomouc, where he develops an EU-funded project, Sinophone Borderlands. He also actively participates in numerous networks focused on EU-China affairs, such as the European Think Tank Network on China (ETNC), the China in Europe Research Network (CHERN), or Chinese Observers in Central Europe (CHOICE).

---