Title: Future imperfect: The European Union's encounter with China (and the United States)
Abstract: 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.
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-07-17
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 35
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