Beyond dichotomy?

Abstract

J. Gurol the conceptual implications of the state of art and points towards possible future avenues for research. 2 Empirical shortcomings in EU-China research While a lot has been written about EU-China economic affairs, their relationship in the security realm is a controversial and highly debated, yet under-researched issue. Taken that few world regions are under such scrutiny in current global politics as the EU and China, this is surprising. Albeit in very different manners, the two actors form central pillars of international politics, not only because they account for one third of global trade, but also because they represent a decisive axis in the current world order, as rightly pointed to by Shambaugh (D. Shambaugh 2005). Despite diverging political principles of interstate and region-to-state relations, including state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and intervention policies, the EU and China have developed solid and recurrent interactions in a variety of policy fields. These range from people-to-people, social and cultural contacts, over economic negotiations to foreign and security policy. In doing so, they have substantially institutionalized their relations over time (Christiansen et al. 2019). Although the main drivers of EU-China relations remain of an economic kind, meaning primarily concerns with trade, investment and intellectual property issues (Kirchner et al. 2015; Huotari et al. 2017), the security dimension of their relationship has become more significant over time. It has by now developed into a vital pillar of EU-China relations. With respect to the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) of 2003, and the Strategic Agenda for Cooperation of 2013, China and the EU have expressed the will to coordinate their foreign and security policy matters. Moreover, under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) they agreed to align their security policies to create a "secure and stable environment from China to Europe, including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria" (Schweisgut 2015). The expansion of EU-China security relations over time and concerning the array of security issues is an interesting and puzzling phenomenon. Although economic matters still dominate the EU-China agenda, the security domain is all but tenuous (Kirchner et al. 2015), not only because of the deepening economy-security nexus but also because of the rise of transnational security challenges like climate and energy security, maritime security or food security that equally affect the EU and China. Yet, for decades, EU-China security cooperation has been hindered by contradicting principles of foreign and security policymaking (D. L. Shambaugh et al. 2008). Although these principles are still adhered today and lead to increasing political frictions, the intensity and scope of EU-China security cooperation have widened over time. Within an overall relationship dominated by increasing mistrust and political tensions, this is interesting to look at. Despite this fact, the security domain of EU-China relations has ...

The EU-China Security Paradox

“…While the US has been regarded as the most important security provider (Chaban et al, 2017), the EU's role as a security actor has increased and so has its impact on EU-China security relations, they argue. Therefore, it is also of analytical value to assess EU-China relations on a region-to-state level and to treat the EU and China as two global actors with increasing importance (Kirchner, 2015;Gurol, 2020a).…”