Asia Europe Journal最新文献

Europeanising the Western Balkans is exceptionally intricate in times of crisis. China’s growing engagement in the region has made it more complicated. The European Union (EU) would be in a better position if it learns to accommodate other external actors in the area, shifting its focus from a parochial partnership to a pragmatic one. Irrespective of the rhetorical systemic rivalry, China has brought and will continuously bring funding and expertise to the Western Balkan countries. After all, chronic underdevelopment, in no small part, has kept them away from gaining EU membership. Therefore, even though the realist idiom warns that two tigers cannot coexist in one mountain, the Western Balkans can and should accommodate more external actors if regional stakeholders, such as the EU and China, can take the region’s development seriously. Specifically, the article examines the convergence of EU-China interests in land transport infrastructure development in the Western Balkans.

China’s approach to Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as a group has drawn suspicion, criticism, and competition within and beyond the region, particularly given that the economic results have failed to satisfy CEE countries. Arguably, China adopts a functional approach to China-led multilateral platforms by employing soft law to govern interaction and cooperation among participants involved, aiming to increase its capacity to adapt to changing international circumstances and lessen concerns about sovereign costs among the participating actors. Yet, it is also widely acknowledged that pragmatic thinking ineluctably yields to a realist mentality, leading to more commentaries on China’s unfulfilled influence across different regions to some extent. This article believes that soft law can still have a role to play in the context of geopolitical competition, as shown in China–CEE cooperation.

Following the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, the British government sought to construct the UK as “Global Britain” to reinvigorate its foreign policy. Subsequently, in 2019, the UK government announced a “Pacific Uplift” to facilitate greater engagement with the Pacific Island States. Alongside Australia’s “Pacific Step Up” and New Zealand’s “Pacific Reset”, this engagement is part of a wider shift in foreign relations as Western powers seek to counter perceived Chinese influence in the region. Within this article, I consider the changing relationship between the UK and the Pacific Island States. I argue that the UK’s “Pacific Uplift” was shaped by colonial legacies despite the absence of discussion of them. I contend that the UK’s re-engagement with Pacific Islanders is influenced by the announcement of the Australian-UK-US (AUKUS) security alliance and the UK’s wider military presence continues to be framed by colonial legacies. Finally, I argue that climate-ocean governance has been utilised by the UK to leverage influence as a partner rather than a former colonial power. I advocate for greater scrutiny of the UK’s changing relationship with Pacific Island States.

Term limit changes are significantly linked to political instability in Africa. Yet, it is ignored as an issue in the trilateral cooperation between European Union (EU), China and Africa. Indeed, a central question that could face both the EU and China over term limits in Africa is the extent to which it is legitimate for them to take action against attempts to violate term limits. This paper is an attempt to consider joint EU and China influence on African politics from the perspective of term limits. Why and how have/should EU and China respond to term limits? How can a trilateral cooperation between EU, China and Africa help institutionalize the respect of term limits? With the help of qualitative and quantitative data from official communiqués, events, and reports, the paper considers term limits as major political issue EU, China and Africa must care about given that it is a major factor of State fragility and political instability. It finds that a grounded trilateral policy framework on term limits is not only possible in an EU-China-Africa cooperation, but can strengthen democratic institutions in the continent and reflect the genuine commitment of the EU and China to promote sustainable democracy and political stability in Africa. If the EU and China want sustainable development of Africa, then the issue of presidential term limits must be significantly addressed within a trilateral cooperation.

China has shifted its strategy towards engaging with Europe in Africa from passive engagement to active encouragement. As China has been promoting third-party market cooperation as a new model of cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, Europe is considered a major partner, especially in African markets. This article examines how Chinese policy thinkers and businesses perceive third-party market cooperation with Europe in Africa. Through firsthand interviews, the authors find a high consensus on the Chinese side regarding the necessity of third-party market cooperation with Europe in Africa. This model is also considered a “Europe-friendly” approach to invite European governments’ participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, and an attractive proposal to European firms looking for access to more financing. Though Chinese companies see working with European companies in the African market as a normal business practice, most have been passive collaborators rather than active engagers. Drawing from secondary resources, we also briefly compare European and African views.

Although it never formally participated, the British government described the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and relations with China more broadly in strikingly positive terms between 2015 and 2019. Nonetheless, by late 2019 and amidst a sharp deterioration in relations, the prospect of the UK joining the BRI had more or less disappeared from the government’s agenda. This article argues that there was not a ruptural policy break. While there was a turnaround, there were also significant numbers of short-run policy zigzags. The principal reason for this instability, the article argues, lies in the relatively weak character of the UK-China policy regime which was an amalgam that sought to accommodate and integrate three different ideational clusters. Such amalgams are inherently unstable and policies drawn from them are likely to change quickly in response to internal tensions as well as exogenous events and developments. Given this, British policy towards China moved quickly and erratically between a “golden era”, a repudiation of this as “naïve”, and the designation of China as a “systemic challenge”. Within this context, expressions of enthusiasm for the BRI were displaced by uninterest or scepticism.

Regional integration changes domestic decision-making structures, relations among social forces, and power distribution in different ways. China influences Turkey’s domestic dynamics through involvement in economic cooperation, geostrategic alliances, and factional alliances. Concurrent and conflicting decision-making processes and foreign policy informality shape Turkey’s engagement with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This research conceptualizes political informality as an authoritarian governance tool within the legal boundaries but outside of bureaucratic rationality. Turkey’s attempts to be involved in the BRI have contributed to informalization as an authoritarian strategy of the ruling party (AKP). This research concerns a case study on the now Chinese-owned Kumport to demonstrate how informalization of state-business relations shapes Turkey’s transnational relations. The findings point out to the negative consequences of this informalization on the Chinese investments in Turkey’s logistics sector. The decrease in the power of the relatively Weberian bureaucracy of Turkey under the new presidential system led to the marginalization of Kumport in global shipping routes.