The Chinese Origins of Euroscepticism

In this paper I show that Euroscepticism is causally related to economic globalization as captured by the surge of Chinese manufacturing imports from 1989 to 2007. To test this proposition, I conduct a cross-sectional analysis of 97 NUTS-2 subnational regions of 10 European countries. The causal relationship is identified via instrumenting imports to Europe by imports to the United States. The conducted analysis shows that regions that were harder hit by the Chinese import shock have higher shares of Eurosceptic population than less affected regions., On the individual level, citizens residing in subnational regions with historical specialization in manufacturing are more likely to become Eurosceptic as a result of the imports surge. The exact type of Euroscepticism a citizen takes depends on her ex-ante perception of the EU.