The European Union, China, and Global Governance

Perceptions, Misperceptions, and Convergences

Project Context

China’s role in global governance is one of the defining questions for world politics in the 21st century. The European Union (EU) has largely subscribed to a cooperative approach towards China, promoting an increasingly institutionalized system of political and bureaucratic cooperation in various policy areas in the context of the EU-China strategic partnership. Nonetheless, a high degree of diverging expectations and misperceptions characterize EU- China relations. Images of China as a rising authoritarian great power and of Europe as a value-guided civilian power dominate much of the political discussion. Until now, research on EU-China relations has largely failed to open up the black box of EU-China relations by employing an actor-centered perspective. Yet it is only by thoroughly analyzing the cultural context and evolving identities of actors shaping EU-China relations, as well as the impact of the interaction on global governance, that we can better understand the full dynamics of this evolving relationship.

Project Objectives

With support provided by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), GPPi will prepare a comprehensive grant application for the EU’s Seventh Framework Program (socio-economic sciences and the humanities, FP7) under the heading “Europe’s changing role in the world”. The working title of the planned collaborative research proposal is “The European Union, China, and Global Governance. Perceptions, Misperceptions, and Convergences”. The project will seek to explore the underlying dynamics of the EU-China partnership with regard to key global governance challenges. To this end, the project will conduct an in-depth analysis of EU-China relations with regard to five policy areas that are of prime importance in the context of global governance: non-proliferation, international crisis management, energy policy, foreign aid/development policy, and trade policy. By building an interdisciplinary and pan-European network of research partners, the project will attempt to combine EU-China-related findings from a broad variety of disciplines, bringing together insights from the humanities (including Sinology and European studies) with economics and international relations.