Who Summons the Dragon? China’s demand-driven influence in Central-Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans

A political and economic regional comparison

Based on a mixed-method methodology cross-cutting the political/economical divide, our latest brief shows that while China wants to increase its economic and political influence in the region, there is a significant difference between the story we hear and the facts we see. Despite China’s efforts to leverage vulnerabilities in the region, its political influence seems to be still relatively low. Economic influence by itself cannot match Western economic ties either. Political engagement with China is shaped mostly by domestic factors and geopolitical considerations, particularly those related to security.

Voices of Central Eastern Europe. Romania Country Report

GlobalFocus Center partnered again last year with Globsec (Bratislava) for the fifth edition of GLOBSEC Trends 2020, assessing current perceptions in Romania towards a wide range of issues: from Covid-19 health crisis, all the way to the nature of relations Romania entertains with international powers like US, Russia or China.
As disinformation became more prevalent during the pandemic, a certain lack of coherent policies addressing it became more visible. We found out that 39% of Romanians are believing in one or more Covid-19 related conspiracies. We have also found out that only 26% of the Romanians are believing to be represented by the traditional political elites*.

The Great Unification and Disinformation

“Disinformation about Romanian-Hungarian relations as presented in Romanian mainstream and social media is primarily an illustration of home-grown mistrust between two communities lacking proper dialogue and knowledge of each other, a mistrust that, in addition, was historically cultivated as an instrument of manipulation during the decades of communism”

Revisionism in Romania, in the Context of the Centennial

This article is summarising the conclusions of a research conducted over the Romanian mainstream and social media, seeking to identify the presence of secessionist and revisionist narratives, what are the conditions facilitating their presence, and who are the actors benefiting. The research was part of the project Revealing Russian disinformation networks and active measures fuelling secessionism and border revisionism in the CEE, conducted under the supervision of Political Capital, Budapest

Monitoring COVID-19-related disinformation. A series of reports.

The following publication presents the findings of GlobalFocus Center and its regional partners’ monitoring of disinformation in 17+ countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Russia, the Eastern Partnership and Western Balkans. This overview provides a synthetic image of the COVID-19-related disinformation and misinformation in the broader region.