Rising China and Politics in Europe: Actors, Modes of Influence, and Outcomes

Despite the enormous amount of scholarly work focusing on the rise of China in the 21st Century and its impact on international politics, we are still only beginning to understand China’s ascent to global power. How a world order featuring a powerful China will unfold, what the nature of it will be, and what that means for Europe are still poorly understood. The reasons are manifold. For one, China’s recent foreign policy initiatives, most prominently the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative do not fit neatly into the analytical devices of traditional IR scholarship that often focus on the Sino-US rivalry. Another limitation is the focus on China’s formal diplomacy, traditional state actors and state policies, neglecting the Communist one-party state’s long tradition of using non-traditional means. While the recent discussion about Chinese ‘sharp power’ and ‘united front work’ put such non-traditional instruments in the spotlight, it sometimes suffers from conceptual shortcomings and an over-alarmist tendency. Finally, literature on China’s relations to Europe in particular, has assumed for too long that China wants to learn from, or could be influenced by Europe and the EU which helps little to understand a Chinese foreign policy agenda that is increasingly ambitious and explicit in its intention to shape international relations at the regional and global level. This Section seeks to boost our understanding of the political influence of China’s rise in Europe. China’s rise is a global issue, but this proposed Section narrows its focus on China’s influence in Europe’s politics. The regional focus is meant to foster integration of research by scholars with different research areas and common interest in the political and geographical space of Europe. Given the diversity of China’s foreign policy initiatives and actors, we understand ‘European politics’ very broadly to include not only European Union politics, but also the domestic politics of European states, regional or sub-regional politics, political communication and media, foreign and security policy, gender, cultural politics, and contentious politics. The broad approach is meant to capture the multidimensional influence that we expect the rise of China to have on European societies. China’s rising power and potential influence can manifest itself actively and passively. Beijing can actively and intentionally use its economic power, its official state-to-state or public diplomacy, its party-to-party-diplomacy or more covert united front work to influence the behaviour, decisions, or opinions of international actors, states, social groups, or individuals. Passively, China’s rise may have an impact even without Beijing’s active attempt to exert influence. Rising states perceived to be successful often induce admiration or even emulation among foreign citizenries and elites. The Section welcomes Papers that address any of the various instruments that are actively employed by China, as well as Papers analysing China’s passive influence, provided that the substantive focus is on China’s political influence in Europe. As an organizational device, the Section proposes four levels of analysis to understand China’s political influence in Europe: supranational, domestic, sub-state, and societal. First, at the supranational level, understanding the dynamics of China’s influence on international European politics and foreign policy is in its infancy, and there is significant room for systematic analysis that focus only on Europe as well as approaches that compare China’s influence in other regionally-focused international organizations. Second, China’s rise is likely to influence domestic politics in European countries. The economic power of China may realign domestic political coalitions or alter the policymaking priorities of individual European states. Third, China’s newfound political power can manifest itself at the sub-state level. China’s power can actively or passively influence political actors or policy-makers below the official state-to-state level. Fourth and finally, China’s political influence can be felt at the mass level among ordinary citizens. China’s public diplomacy and foreign propaganda efforts are well-developed and aim to control the narrative about China and its rise. We envision Panels along these four proposed levels of analysis, enabling contributions to speak to each other through their common level at which Chinese influence is targeted or may manifest itself and at which it is investigated. The multidimensional nature of China’s newfound influence means that there is the possibility and the need to approach the subject from various epistemological and methodological perspectives. Possible contributions could include, for example, policy analysis of China-related EU policies and the role of Chinese lobbying or pressure on individual member states in EU decision-making; network analysis of Chinese-European elite networks; or survey research on Chinese presence and public opinion on China in Europe. This Section aims to integrate different perspectives and to facilitate dialogue between scholars that might otherwise be siloed in disciplinary or area studies boundaries. It is difficult to overstate how significant China’s rise is, both for academic and policy-relevant reasons. This Section will provide an opportunity for European scholars to focus their attention together on lending new depth to our knowledge about this critically important issue.