On 16th December 2015 senior officials, former diplomats, members of different local and foreign think tanks, and scholars from China and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) gathered in Beijing to discuss further promotion of exchanges of common ideas and proposals in order to provide intellectual support to the 16+1 cooperation between China and CEEC.

After organizing the 4^th Summit of China and CEEC in Suzhou, in November 2015, which has developed a new guideline for the future cooperation between China and CEEC, the symposium was endowed with power to focus on the outcome reached during the Suzhou Summit in order to render intellectual assistance to the cooperation between China and CEEC from the perspective of think tanks.

For the purpose of implementing the proposal of Premier Li Keqiang, the Suzhou Guidelines provided the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) with a leading position to establish a China-CEEC Think Tanks Network which was successfully launched within this symposium. The Network shall create and boost an international coordination mechanism and high-level exchange platform for think tanks from China and CEEC by means of project cooperation, think tank dialogue and case study that will lead to strengthening their partnership in economic, social, political, and people-to-people areas.