Paper Titles & Abstracts

The growing academic literature on European and Chinese foreign policy and on EU-China relations relies heavily on conceptual frameworks developed by Western scholars. Chinese terminology only receives scant attention. Western foreign policy scholars often show limited interest in Chinese concepts and generally do not have the required language skills for in-depth study of those concepts. Chinese academics, one the other hand, tend to adopt the analytical frameworks put forward by European policy-makers and scholars when studying EU-China relations and EU foreign policy. This paper contributes to remedying that conceptual imbalance, by presenting an innovative analytical framework that compares the main foreign policy principles of the European Union and China. Key Chinese principles such as xiaokang (a moderately-well off society) and guanxi (relationships) -which guide Chinese foreign policy but have received very limited attention in European academia- are discussed and systematically related to their European counterparts. Both differences and similarities between the two sets of principles are highlighted. The framework was constructed on the basis of extensive study of EU and Chinese official documents on the one hand and of English- and Chinese-language academic publications on the other, and relied on close cooperation between European and Chinese scholars. It provides an accessible tool for achieving a more balanced conceptual approach to the study of EU and Chinese foreign policy. As the principles it covers are general in nature, the analytical framework will be useful for researchers studying EU and Chinese engagement on a variety of topics and regions. It will also shed new light on the analysis of EU-China bilateral relations, by offering a terminology that has been more equally inspired by both sides in those relations.