Poland leverages China’s rail link in Europe to rein In Belarus

Poland has threatened to choke off a key Chinese rail export route to the European Union in a diplomatic gambit to slow escalating the migration crisis on its eastern border.

President Andrzej Duda used his state visit in Beijing in late June to link the issue of migration and freight transit on the Belarusian border, according to people briefed on the talks. The number of irregular crossings from Belarus into Poland has dropped significantly since.

Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader of Belarus, has spent the last three years trying to stir up a migration emergency on his country’s 400 kilometer (250 mile) frontier with Poland. Tensions escalated in May when a Polish border guard was attacked and killed by a migrant, after which the government in Warsaw pledged to spend around $2.5 billion to fortify the area.

It also found a diplomatic pressure point. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shuttered trade routes, Belarus has emerged as the sole railway link for Chinese goods heading to the EU with the volume of containers increasing by 89% in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Eurasian Rail Alliance.

Lukashenko welcomed the jump in Chinese rail transit, eager to offset Belarus’ near-total dependence on Russia for cheap energy and loans. 

On July 2, after Duda had returned from Beijing, Poland signaled that it would effectively shut rail transit through the Malaszewicze checkpoint on the Belarus border for 33 hours by slowing security and customs checks.

Poland’s leveraging of freight transit in discussions with China “could be a factor” in the lower numbers of border crossings since Duda’s visit, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Bloomberg. “We are still very angry about the killing of our soldier on the border,” he said.

Leveraging China

Attempts to breach Poland’s border have ebbed and flowed in recent years, but began to rise sharply in the weeks before European parliamentary elections in June. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the migrants were predominantly from Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran and accused Belarus and Russia of weaponizing migration.

The Polish president’s trip to China caught Lukashenko’s attention. In a speech on July 2, the Belarusian leader said that Duda “asked Xi Jinping to influence Lukashenko and Putin so that they would end migration.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a reply to July 11 questions from Bloomberg News that Beijing “hopes that relevant parties can properly resolve differences through dialog” and “ensure the security and smoothness of international logistics channels.” 

Irregular border crossings from Belarus have plummeted by 70% since early June, Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak told public broadcaster TVP Info on Tuesday. More than one hundred such cases were reported by the Polish border guards on June 27, the last day of Duda’s state visit.

Even if a tiny part of China’s exports to the EU go via Belarus, the shipping crisis on the Red Sea and its consequences for maritime trade mean that Eurasian rail links are enjoying a renaissance, said Konrad Poplawski from the Centre for Eastern Studies, a Warsaw-based think-tank.

Warsaw’s so-far successful leverage of a strategic vulnerability against China can serve as a lesson for policymakers. Beijing, which Poplawski said is the EU’s “trade partner but also a competitor and systemic rival,” can change tack if the bloc is “ready to bear economic costs” when its core interests are at stake.