On a bright morning in Prague or Budapest, you could be forgiven for missing the quiet but pervasive shift underway. It is not a political coup or a military confrontation, but something subtler: the steady expansion of China’s artificial intelligence (AI) influence across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen, and other Chinese AI pioneers are making strategic inroads, offering technological advancements that promise efficiency gains, economic modernization, and research collaboration. The question is not whether CEE countries should engage, but how to balance opportunity with sovereignty risks – and at what cost.

For years, China’s presence in CEE was defined by physical infrastructure: bridges, railways, and highways under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Today, the battleground has shifted to the digital realm through the Digital Silk Road (DSR), with AI, cloud computing, and smart cities taking center stage. Chinese tech is now deeply embedded in CEE’s digital backbone: Huawei dominates Hungary’s 5G networks and partners with its National University on AI research, Alibaba’s cloud services optimize Polish logistics via a $65M DHL partnership, and DeepSeek’s models enhance automation for Chinese........

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