Will Money Contribute to Goodwill and Soft Power: An Empirical Study of the Economic Relations Between European Union and China and China’s National Image Among European Countries

Since the start of China’s Going Global Initiative in 1999 and more recently the inception of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, China’s FDI and contractual projects have been on rise worldwide, along with its continued expansions in trade of goods and services. In the context of the tariff barriers by the United States, the largest economy in the world, the role played by China in globalization and multilateralism has become more salient than ever before. The focus of this paper is to explore the political implications of the worldwide reach of China’s economic power through its outward direct investment, contracts, and trade. Particularly, by means of a statistical analysis of the member states of the European Union through cross-country and time-series methodology, we want to identify if the increase in China’s economic relations with EU will improve its national image in EU countries. As contracts, FDI and trade play different roles and have different functions, we expect their impact on China’s image in Europe will be different. Similarly, as EU member states are variegated in economic, political, and security needs, their image of China as conditioned by their economic relations with China will also vary. This research projects will look into several measures of public images of China in various survey datasets such as Pew Research, BBC Global Span/Pipa Institute and Eurobarometer across all 27 EU’s member states. Such a study will not only uncover the patterns and trends of China’s economic activities in Europe, but also, more importantly, shed light on the future international relations that involve European Union and China, and in that connection, the future world order in the 21st century.