The nascent scholarly debate about the EU’s security policy towards China suffers from several theoretical and conceptual shortcomings. One of these shortcomings is an almost total lack of theoretical reflection on the notion of security. Due to this, scholars not only debate the nature of the EU’s security policy towards China, but they can’t even agree whether there is such a policy in the first place.[1] This paper argues, first, that for a thorough analysis of the EU’s security policy towards China, the very notion of security needs to be reflected in the light of the discussions within the field of Security Studies since the differences in the verdicts of scholars (as indicated above) are caused by a lack of an explicitly elaborated conception of the term security. Secondly, a discourse-analytical examination of the pivotal policy papers on the EU’s security policy towards China will show that the EU’s basic security-political approach to China is a liberal-relational one, i.e. primarily focused on institutionalized cooperation and confidence-building. This analysis will reveal, thirdly, that this liberal-relational approach of the EU has remained constant over the last one-and-a-half decades. This paper therefore questions explicitly the view of scholars who claim to have observed a change in the EU’s security policy towards China in the aftermath of the arms embargo imbroglio (2005) and the end of the cooperation in the Galileo satellite navigation project (2008) in terms of a realignment of the EU with US positions on East Asian security issues.2 It argues instead that an explanation of these two policy changes – while the basic liberal-relational approach as laid down in the policy papers was not altered – requires further remedy of the shortcomings identified at the outset of the paper. [1] Alyson Bailes and Anna Wetter (EU-China Security Relations: The ‚Softer’ Side, in: Kerr, David/Fei, Liu (eds.) 2007: The International Politics of EU-China Relations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 153-183) denying a EU security policy and Sebastian Bersick (The impact of European and Chinese Soft Power on regional and global governance, in: ibid. pp. 216-230) arguing that the EU’s soft power approach is well suited to deal with the rise of China make up the two opposite ends of that continuum. [2] Casarini, Nicola 2009: Remaking the global order. The evolution of Europe-China relations and its implications for East Asia and the United States, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
