ABSTRACT
During the last few years China has expressed a willingness to begin to relate to the Nordic states in a more coordinated and structured manner, similar to how the country has organized its relationship with European countries from East and Central Europe. During a November 2016 speech by China's Ambassador to Sweden, Chen Yuming, at a China-Nordic diplomacy conference in Stockholm, the growing sub-regional relationship between the two parties was lauded as bringing about numerous benefits. Although there is considerable interest from both the Chinese and the Nordics to explore the possibilities of a more formal and structured cooperation, there are also some concerns, at least on the Nordic side, as to how such a structured cooperation might be designed and how it might function. As the Nordic five face an increasingly uncertain future in the form of economic and political changes in Europe, the rise of China has grown in importance among the sub-region as a whole.
