This edited collection offers the first sustained exploration of the scope for a shared narrative to emerge between the EU and China. Forging a shared strategic narrative is hard. But if not achieved, then the EU and China will move towards different and competing horizons, find they understand breaking events through different lenses, and find the identification of common interests more and more difficult. This book is informed conceptually by a focus on power and communication on the one hand, and by the understanding that EU-China relations do not exist in a vacuum on the other. How the EU views China depends on China’s response to the USA’s Asia pivot, to China’s relations with African states, and indeed China’s own relationship with Russia. In this context, how can European and Chinese leaders turn One Road One Belt into a win-win situation when their relations to others will complicate matters and, in fact, other states may even seek to actively disrupt that EU-China relation?
Author(s): Alister Miskimmon; Ben O'Loughlin; Jinghan Zeng
Series: Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 287
City: Cham
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Tables
1 Introduction
How Do We Analyse Strategic Narrative?
Plan of the Chapters
References
Part I Shaping Narratives: Contexts for Alignment
2 The EU’s Struggle for a Strategic Narrative on China
Introduction
Theoretical Framework: Strategic Narratives
Can Relations with China Enable a New EU Narrative? Analysing Alignment Potential
Analysis 1: Issue Narratives
Analysis 2: Identity Narratives
Analysis 3: System Narratives
Conclusion
References
3 Framing China–EU Sub-regional Cooperation: The Elusive Pursuit of Normative Resonance?
Introduction
China Goes Sub-regional
The EU’s Normative Claims
China’s Pragmatic Framing
Conclusions
References
4 Reconstructing Geography, Power and Politics in the Belt and Road Initiative
Introduction
From Rings of Fire to Rings of Peace: Geographical Specificities in the BRI
Balancing the Power Asymmetry: No Unipolar Moment for China
Legitimizing the BRI: Performance, Principles and Procedures
Conclusion
References
Part II Evaluating Narratives: Analytical Tools
5 The Paradoxes Between Narrator and Audience in the China’s Narrative of Belt and Road Initiative
Part I: Views on the Narrator, the Narrative, and Its Aims
Views on the Cooperation with China—The Narrative Itself
Views on the Goals Behind This Initiative—The Aims of China’s Narrative
Views on the Chinese Government—The Narrator Itself
Part II: The Conditions Under Which China as the Narrator and Europe as the Audience
The Context for the Communication Between Narrator and Audience
The Narrator’s Methodology of Promotion
Part III: Paradoxes Between China as the Narrator and Europe as the Audience
Part IV: The Institutional Gap Behind the Paradoxes
References
6 China’s Belt and Road Initiative in the European Media: A Mixed Narrative?
Introduction
Contextualizing the Strategic Narratives of BRI
Data Collection and Analytical Approach
Media Narrative of the BRI as a Policy Issue
Media Narrative of BRI on China’s Role in the World System
Media Narrative of BRI About China’s Identity
Conclusions
References
7 Chinese Strategic Narratives of Europe Since the European Debt Crisis
Change of Narratives
Content of the Narrative—Identity
Content of the Narrative—System
Content of the Narrative—Issues
Two Cases
China Saving Europe
Belt and Road Initiative
Assessment
References
8 Choosing the Better Devil: Reception of EU and Chinese Narratives on Development by South African University Students
Introduction
African Perceptions of Development Partners: Attitudes Versus Narratives
South Africa’s Balancing Act
Methodology
The Q Approach
Set-Up of the Study
Findings
View 1: Cautious Embrace of the EU, Distrust of China
View 2: Primacy of Universal Human Rights—Powerful Actors Exploit Africa
View 3: Primacy of Universal Human Rights—Africa Should Work with and Learn from China
View 4: West Harms African Development and Sovereignty, Turn to China
Discussion and Conclusion
References
9 Visual Analysis of the Belt and Road Initiative: The Securing of a Regional Geopolitical Order, China’s Identity, and Infrastructure Development Narratives
Geopolitics of Central Asia and Infrastructure
Ontological Security, Narratives, and Aesthetic Power
Infrastructural Development Narratives
Visual Methodology
The Infrastructural Development Narratives of the Belt and Road Initiative
The Promotion of Connectivity
The Establishing and Strengthening of Partnerships Among the Countries Along the Belt and Road
The Setup of All-Dimensional, Multitiered, and Composite Connectivity Networks
The Aim to Realize Diversified, Independent, Balanced, and Sustainable Development in These Countries
Discussion
The Cosmetic Image of the BRI
Infrastructure, China’s Identity, and Regional Order-Making
A Regional Utopia
Conclusion
References
10 Conclusion
References
References
Index
