Not getting its act together? The European Union’s policy towards China

This chapter will analyse the Union’s foreign policy towards China, based on an adapted neoclassical realism (NCR) approach. Contrary to neo-realism, NCR analyses the International System (and adds structural modifiers), and also opens “the state,” here the European Union (EU), looking at intervening variables such as leader images, strategic culture, state-society relations and domestic political institutions. This framework is used to analyse the EU’s relations with China, drawing from official EU-documents, a series of nine elite-interviews and academic literature. The EU Member States are divided regarding China. The present analysis shows a distinct North-South division regarding the proposal for an International Procurement Instrument initiative. There is also a clear East-West division regarding the possible Comprehensive Investment Agreement.

Thus, looking at the Union’s policy towards China, the surprise is not so much that the EU has a fragmented policy, but that it has one at all. A policy of engagement, which builds on liberal principles (protecting free trade, rule of law and human rights), but which also has to take into account both the Member States’ bilateral relations with China and China’s increasingly realist or say, assertive approach, putting the EU in a dilemma, or with a Chinese proverb: standing on two boats.