Future imperfect: The European Union's encounter with China (and the United States)

Abstract

There has been much talk in recent years about an emerging EU-China axis that challenges the United States in a new strategic triangle. The EU-China strategic partnership, which was declared in 2003, suggests that both sides are gaining global influence as a new kind of superpower that seeks to avoid the bloody conflict that characterized the Cold War. Rather than discuss the contours of this new geopolitical axis, this essay argues that EU-China relations are shifting the meaning of security in an emerging arena of global symbolic politics. It analyzes the symbolic politics of EU-China relations through a close reading of two sets of documents: (1) official policy papers from the European Commission and the PRC's State Council, and (2) European think-tank working papers on China policy. It argues that these documents write the narrative of EU-China relations in ways that limit discussion to a specific narrow range of topics. After outlining Europe's approach to the rise of China, it examines how language politics guides China's engagement with the EU. Then it explores how European think tanks follow the concept of ‘Europeanization’ to frame both how the EU seeks to transform China, and how China policy can help transform the EU. This shows how the rhetorical form of often ambiguous official pronouncements is key in the construction of the content of EU-China relations. The essay concludes that although EU-China relations are getting stronger, predictions of an EU-China axis are over-blown in the sense of being an action to be completed sometime in the indefinite future – ‘future imperfect’. Yet while EU-China relations are unlikely to construct a shared sense of a Eurasian self, the major legacy of recent EU-China ties is likely to be found in the negative identity politics of creating the US as the shared Other. This new global symbolic politics will have a serious impact on the US's concrete relations with China and the EU.

Key words:

• EU-China relations
• symbolic politics
• strategic triangle
• Europeanization

Notes

¹This essay has benefited from comments from Mark Aspinwall, Sumalee Bumroongsook and Jean-Pierre Cabestan. Research for this essay was supported by a European Commission Asia-Link grant (ASI/B7-301/98/679-04).

²See David Shambaugh, ‘The New Strategic Triangle: US and European reactions to China's rise’, Washington Quarterly 28/3 (2005), 7–25; David Shambaugh, ‘China and Europe: The Emerging Axis’, Current History (Oct. 2004), 243–8; also see Kerr and Liu, International Politics of EU-China Relations (Oxford: OUP 2007), which grew out of a conference by the same name held at the British Academy in London, April 2006.

³This is done through international conferences such as the one mentioned above, the research agenda of new think tanks such as the Brussels International Centre for China Studies that was established in 2006, and through special issues on EU-China relations in key journals like the China Quarterly, No. 169 (2002), 1–203.

⁴See Kay Möller, ‘Diplomatic Relations and Mutual Strategic Perceptions: China and the European Union’, China Quarterly, No. 169 (2002), 10–32, and the special issue of a German think tank: ‘German-Chinese Relations: Trade Promotion Plus Something Else?’, German Foreign Policy in Dialogue 6/6, 23 June 2005.

⁵Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2003).

⁶See Joint Statement of the 7th EU-China Summit, The Hague, 8 Dec. 2004; also see ‘EU Aims to Lift China Arms Ban by mid-2005’, China Daily, 20 Dec. 2004; ‘EU Will Not Lift China Arms Ban’, BBC News, 8 Dec. 2004.

⁷See Shambaugh, ‘The New Strategic Triangle’; Shambaugh, ‘China and Europe’.

⁸David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, rev. ed., (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press 1998), 1–2; for an elaboration of this argument for Chinese foreign policy see William A. Callahan, ‘How to Understand China: the Dangers and Opportunities of Being a Great Power’, Review of International Studies 31/4 (2005), 701–14.

⁹Alyson J.K. Bailes and Anna Wetter, ‘EU-China Security Relations: The “Softer Side”’, in Kerr and Liu, International Politics of EU-China Relations; Shambaugh, ‘The New Strategic Triangle’, 22.

¹⁰Stanley Crossick, Fraser Cameron, and Axel Berkofsky, EU-China Relations: Towards a Strategic Partnership (EPC working paper, Brussels: European Policy Centre, July 2005), 36, 38.

¹¹This essay also draws on interviews with European diplomats and think-tank analysts, as well as my own experience as a participant in many EU-China activities over the past ten years, most notably as the director of a three year EC-funded project (2002–05) that built a network of European and Chinese scholars. Because they discuss sensitive issues, I have anonymized interview citations.

¹²See Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP 1973), 8–12. For an application of this narrative approach to Chinese foreign policy see William A. Callahan, Contingent States: Greater China and Transnational Relations (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press 2004), xv–xxxv, 25–55.

¹³See the EC's latest document, European Commission, ‘EU-China: Closer Partners, Growing Responsibilities’, Brussels: EC, 24 Oct. 2006, COM(2006) 631 final, 4.

¹⁴European Commission, ‘A Maturing Partnership – Shared Interests and Challenges in EU-China Relations’, Brussels: EC, 10 Sept. 2003, COM(2003) 533fn; PRC, ‘China's EU Policy Paper’, Beijing: State Council, 13 Oct. 2003.

¹⁵Axel Berkofsky, ‘EU-China Relations – Strategic Partnership or Partners of Convenience’, German Foreign Policy in Dialogue 6/6 (23 June 2005), 14.

¹⁶See Möller, ‘Diplomatic Relations and Mutual Strategic Perceptions’.

¹⁷Jean-Pierre Cabestan, ‘The Role of France in Sino-European Relations: Central or Marginal?’, in Kerr and Liu, International Politics of EU-China Relations, 4–6.

¹⁸Michael E. Smith, Europe's Foreign and Security Policy (Cambridge: CUP 2003).

¹⁹European Commission, ‘A Secure Europe in a Better World: European Security Strategy’ (Brussels: EC, 12 Dec. 2003), 14.

²⁰EC, ‘A Maturing Partnership’, 6.

²¹Ibid., 7, 8.

²²Ibid., 8.

²³Ibid., 6, 3.

²⁴Ibid., 7.

²⁵Ibid., 3, 7.

²⁶Ibid., 7.

²⁷Ibid., 13.

²⁸For an evaluation of these policies see Bailes and Wetter, ‘EU-China Security Relations’.

²⁹EC, ‘A Maturing Partnership’, 14–15.

³⁰Ibid., 19–20.

³¹Ibid., 21.

³²Ibid., 7.

³³Ibid., 3; PRC, ‘China's EU Policy Paper’, 1.

³⁴Interview, 16 June 2006.

³⁵See Chih-yu Shih, ‘Breeding a Reluctant Dragon: Can China Rise into Partnership and Away from Antagonism?’, Review of International Studies 31/4 (2005), 758.

³⁶Ibid., 764ff.

³⁷PRC, ‘China's EU Policy Paper’, 1.

³⁸Ibid., 1–2.

³⁹Michael Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics: Five Studies (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, Univ. of California 1992), 3; also see David E. Apter and Tony Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1994).

⁴⁰See, for example, Ling Dequan, ‘“Heping jueqi” gangju muzhang’[Explaining ‘Peaceful Rise’], Liaowang 5 (2 Feb. 2004), 6; Wu Pu, ‘“Zhongguo weixielun” keyi xiuyi’[Put an End to ‘China Threat Theory’], Renmin ribao (10 Oct. 1992), 6; Callahan, ‘How to Understand China’, 701–14.

⁴¹Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words, 21.

⁴²Gottwald, ‘Germany's China-Policy’, 12.

⁴³Huo Zhengde, ‘On China-EU Strategic Relationship’, China Institute of International Studies, 7 April 2005. It is noteworthy that this article was translated into English, and is widely cited.

⁴⁴Cabestan, ‘The Role of France’, 8; Xinning Song, ‘EU-China Strategic Partnership: Domestic and International Perspectives’, presented at ‘The International Politics of EU-China Relations’ conference, 2006.

⁴⁵Möller, ‘Diplomatic Relations and Mutual Strategic Perceptions’, 11, 31.

⁴⁶A European think tank report on the role of European think tanks states that the EPC and the CER are successful at exerting influence over the European Commission and popular opinion (Stephen Boucher, Europe and its Think Tanks: A Promise to Be Fulfilled (Paris: Notre Europe, Studies and Research No. 35, Oct. 2004), 13, 88).

⁴⁷Stanley Crossick, Fraser Cameron, and Axel Berkofsky, EU-China Relations: Towards a Strategic Partnership, EPC working paper (Brussels: European Policy Centre, July 2005); Katinka Barysch with Charles Grant and Mark Leonard, Embracing the Dragon: The EU's Partnership with China (London: Centre for European Reform, May 2005).

⁴⁸EPC, EU-China Relations, 32–3, 6.

⁴⁹Ibid., 22; also see PRC, ‘China's EU Policy Paper’, 1. Crossick cleaned up the style and grammar, but the language and content are identical.

⁵⁰See Mary Farrell, ‘EU External Relations: Exporting the EU Model of Governance?’, European Foreign Affairs Review 10/4 (2005), 451–62.

⁵¹See Joseph S. Nye, ‘Comparative Regional Integration: Concept and Measurement’, International Organization 22/4 (1968), 855–80; Ernst B. Haas, ‘The Study of Regional Integration: Reflections on the Joy and Anguish of Pretheorizing’, International Organization 24/4 (1970), 607–46.

⁵²See Andrew Moravcisik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1998).

⁵³Johan P. Olsen, ‘The Many Faces of Europeanization’, Journal of Common Market Studies 40/5 (2002): 923.

⁵⁴Ibid., 938.

⁵⁵Maarten Vink, ‘What is Europeanization? And Other Questions on a New Research Agenda’, European Political Science 3/1 (2003), 66.

⁵⁶Olsen, ‘The Many Faces of Europeanization’, 938.

⁵⁷Bruno Coppieters et al., Europeanization and Conflict Resolution (Brussels: Academia Press 2004), 242.

⁵⁸CER, Embracing the Dragon, 8.

⁵⁹Ibid., 52.

⁶⁰Cited in ibid.

⁶¹Ibid.

⁶²Ibid., 1.

⁶³EPC, EU-China Relations, 29.

⁶⁴Ibid., 42–6; CER, Embracing the Dragon, 28. For a discussion of the need to evaluate the success of these dialogues see EC, ‘EU-China: Closer Partners, Growing Responsibilities’, 10.

⁶⁵EPC, EU-China Relations, 38, also see 10.

⁶⁶Interview, 16 June 2006; EC, ‘EU-China: Closer Partners, Growing Responsibilities’, 4.

⁶⁷See Richard P. Suttmeier, Xiangkui Yao, and Alex Zixiang Tan, Standards of Power? Technology, Institutions, and Politics in the Development of China's National Standards Strategy (Seattle, WA: NBR Special Report, June 2006); Scott Kennedy, ‘The Political-Economy of Standards Coalitions: Explaining China's Involvement in High-Tech Standards Wars’, Asia Policy 2 (2006), 41–62.

⁶⁸CER, Embracing the Dragon, 78; also see EPC, EU-China Relations, 18–19; Mark Leonard, ‘A New Approach to China’, CER Bulletin, No. 47 (April/May 2006).

⁶⁹See the report of the ‘EU-China Relations Think Tank Roundtable’, co-organized by the EPC and the China Institute of International Studies, sponsored by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Brussels, July 2005; Huo, ‘On China-EU Strategic Relationship’.

⁷⁰CER, Embracing the Dragon, 24.

⁷¹See Sebastian Bersick, ‘The Impact of European and Chinese Soft Power on Regional and Global Governance’, in Kerr and Liu, International Politics of EU-China Relations.

⁷²See William A. Callahan, ‘Comparative Regionalism: The Logic of Governance in Europe and East Asia’, in Kerr and Liu, International Politics of EU-China Relations.

⁷³See Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Introduction: Asian Regionalism in Comparative Perspective’, in Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (eds.), Network Power: Japan and Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1997), 22.

⁷⁴Alastair Iain Johnston, ‘Socialization in International Institutions: The ASEAN Way and International Relations Theory’, in G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno (eds.), International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific (New York: Columbia UP 2003), 108.

⁷⁵See Alice Ba, ‘Who's Socializing Whom?: Complex Engagement in Sino-ASEAN Relations’, Pacific Review 19/2 (2006), 157–80.

⁷⁶See Callahan, Contingent States, 1–24.

⁷⁷EC, ‘EU-China: Closer Partners, Growing Responsibilities’, 11.

⁷⁸See Leonard, ‘A New Approach to China’.

⁷⁹Cited in EPC, EU-China Relations, 19; this point was reiterated in EC, ‘EU-China: Closer partners, growing responsibilities’, 11.

⁸⁰James Moran, ‘Relations with China – the European Approach’, 17 Feb. 2005, 6.

⁸¹EPC, EU-China Relations, 36.

⁸²Ibid.

⁸³CER, Embracing the Dragon, 7.

⁸⁴Ibid., 2.

⁸⁵Olsen, ‘The Many Faces of Europeanization’, 923.

⁸⁶‘Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe’, Official Journal of the European Union, C 310, 47 (16 Dec. 2004), Article III-298.

⁸⁷See Federico Bordonaro, ‘EADS China Deal Raises Concerns’, International Relations and Security Watch (20 Dec. 2005), <www.isn.ethz.ch/news>, accessed on 21 June 2006; also see ‘Major Successes for EADS within the scope of its Strategic Partnership with China’, <Defesanet.com.br/eads/eads_China.htm>, accessed on 21 June 2006.

⁸⁸Gottwald, ‘Germany's China-Policy’, 12.

⁸⁹See ‘European Parliament Votes to Continue China Arms Embargo’, AFP (17 Nov. 2004).

⁹⁰ New York Times, 2 April 2005, 1.

⁹¹EPC, EU-China Relations, 16.

⁹²Boucher, Europe and its Think Tanks, 111–13.

⁹³The Notre Europe report stresses how these think tanks are funded in large part by corporate subscriptions and donations (Ibid., 35, 44, 177, 182).

⁹⁴Berkofsky, ‘EU-China Relations’, 21.

⁹⁵Yiyi Lu, ‘China's Future Political and Social Development: Challenges and Opportunities for the EU’, presented at CER seminar ‘Embracing the Dragon: How Should the EU Respond to China's Rise?’, Brussels, 15 June 2005, 4.

⁹⁶See the report of the ‘EU-China Relations Think Tank Roundtable’, July 2005.

⁹⁷For a discussion of the weakness of China studies in Europe see Shambaugh, ‘The New Strategic Triangle’, 17ff.

⁹⁸EC, ‘EU-China: Closer Partners, Growing Responsibilities’, 2.

⁹⁹‘EU takes tough line with China on trade’, Financial Times, 24 Oct. 2006; ‘EU and India buck trend for fewer anti-dumping cases’, Financial Times, 22 Nov. 2006; also see European Commission, ‘Competition and partnership’ (Brussels: EC, 24 Oct. 2006, COM(2006) 632 final).

¹⁰⁰EC, ‘EU-China: Closer Partners, Growing Responsibilities’, 12.

¹⁰¹See the White House, ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, 17 Sept. 2002, revised in 16 March 2006, section VIII-C-7.

¹⁰²Differences in tone are not merely symbolic, but are the result of different capabilities for influencing China. While the US is confident that it can influence China, the UK feels its ‘influence can only be at the margins’ (Cited in Shaun Breslin, ‘Power and Production: Rethinking China's Global Economic Role’, Review of International Studies 31/4 (2005), 738).

¹⁰³EC, ‘A Maturing Partnership’, 6.

¹⁰⁴Ibid.

¹⁰⁵Ibid., 23.

¹⁰⁶See Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of the Nation (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press 1994), 5.

¹⁰⁷EPC, EU-China Relations, 4.

¹⁰⁸CER, Embracing the Dragon, 24, 24, 47, 70, 76; EPC, EU-China Relations, 16, 17, 21, 22, 31, 32, 34, 37.

¹⁰⁹CER, Embracing the Dragon, 60.

¹¹⁰See, for example, Bersick, ‘The Impact of European and Chinese Soft Power’.