Asia Europe Journal最新文献

This study analyses the effects of the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) on Japan and the EU’s 28 countries since it was enforced in 2019. The Japan-EU EPA has positive beneficial effects on the two participating economies, Japan and the EU. The removal of trade barriers and NTMs leads to more competition, more trade efficiency improvements, and ultimately more benefits to the participating countries/regions. Japan and the EU can benefit from the Japan-EU EPA by removing tariffs as a part of a trade liberalisation policy. The reduction of NTMs is important to liberalise international trade and get more benefits from the Japan-EU EPA. The Japan-EU EPA and trade liberalisation deal can contribute to not only Japan and the EU’s bilateral trade but also mutual GDPs and welfare levels. However, while non-participating countries, such as South Korea, may be negatively affected by the Japan-EU EPA, it produces positive overall welfare effects for the rest of the world.

The China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) is a balanced, high-level, and mutually beneficial investment agreement. It not only sets up a new legal framework for China-EU economic and trade relations, but also provides stability for China-EU bilateral relations in an uncertain world experiencing major changes.

The major objective of the China-EU CAI was to facilitate a rebalancing of the bilateral relationship by improving access for European companies to the Chinese market and leveling the playing field for them in China. While progress on the former is hard to deny, the situation is less rosy on the latter, and whether China will expeditiously implement its commitments remains an open question. France—one of the driving forces behind the deal—shares the European Commission’s optimism and considers that the agreement represents a step forward and a sign of China’s willingness to open up further.

This article offers a novel understanding of China’s changing engagement in global climate governance over the past decade. This article argues that China has embedded the construction of its international identity, which has been transforming towards what this article conceptualizes to be a ‘Yinling leading power’, in promoting and leading global climate governance. China’s transforming identity construction has contributed to changing its construction of climate justice and led China to proactively undertake more responsibilities, provide international public goods and promote international climate cooperation. Global climate governance has become one of China’s prototypical discursive frames in constructing its new international identity, an important platform where China seeks to share leadership with other major powers and the climate leadership in turn constitutes China’s new identity. However, China’s inadequate response to international expectations and lack of self-reflection in its climate policy have influenced international recognition on its climate leadership and new identity. In general, China’s transforming identity construction and its reconstruction of climate justice have far-reaching implications for China and Europe to cooperate and coordinate in strengthening global climate justice and promoting global climate governance.

Climate justice is a concept with many different and competing interpretations. It has salience at intra-country, inter-country and intergenerational levels of climate politics. While inter-country climate justice has long been on the agenda of United Nations climate negotiations, the intra-country and intergenerational aspects of climate justice have assumed new prominence in many countries in recent years, as the economic consequences of mitigation became felt and transnational activism highlighted youth concerns. The diverse elements of and approaches to climate justice have this in common: realising them requires massive financial interventions and reforms. This article examines the still emerging frameworks to finance climate justice in two of the jurisdictions most important to the global response to climate change: the European Union and the People’s Republic of China. The EU and China have in common that they are both on the front line of financial innovation to respond to climate change. They are utilising similar tools of systemic financial intervention in order to transition financing to climate-friendly investment, in the first case domestically, but with clear implications for global financial markets. However, the EU and China are utilising climate financing mechanisms in the context of very different prevailing perspectives on climate justice. This article interrogates the relationship between these different perspectives on climate justice and the distribution, scale and pace of climate finance. The article also observes that while the EU incorporated climate justice considerations in its economic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic with a recovery package prioritising climate action, China did not take the opportunity to foster a ‘green recovery’.

How did Britons view China in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? This paper presents new, detailed evidence of the negative and worsening perceptions of China in the UK across three domains: public opinion (based on survey data collected in autumn 2020), political elites in parliament, and the media. The worsening of perceptions of China emerged in the context of a changing and more contested China policy from the UK government and a greater level of public debate about China, partly a consequence of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper places analysis of these perceptions in the context of the development of relations between the UK and China. Together with deteriorating Chinese views of the UK’s China policy and controversy over a number of developments in China, widespread negative views about China among the British public and in political circles will constrain UK-China relations from developing in a more positive direction.

Climate change has been socially constructed crisscrossed by public and private interests, asymmetries and world-view conflicts. When it comes to the legitimacy of norms to address the complexities of social conditions of vulnerability and effective actions to fulfil distributive and climate justice principles, climate change still faces a discrepancy between political announcements and incongruous practices of international actors. While analysing the cases of China and the European Union, we point out contradictions stemming from their policy goals guided by strategic interests. From a global climate justice perspective, we analyze recent power dynamics that operate at two levels: first, economic relations and negotiations between Brazil and the two poles of power, considering the scenario of socio-environmental injustice and climate insecurity; second, policy practices of both global players in climate governance, bearing in mind the notions of climate justice and development as conceptual guides to understand when and where contradictions emerge. To do so, this article is structured around three sections: (i) a brief historical account of China’s and the EU’s roles in international climate policy; (ii) their legacies in climate governance and the inextricable relationship between their normative behaviour and their development objectives; (iii) an overview of the signing of the strategic memorandum of understanding for economic and trade agreement between Mercosur and the EU in 2019, as well as Sino-Brazilian relations facilitating investments and trade in multiple segments vis-à-vis the most recent multifaceted backlash in Brazil’s socio-environmental and climate policies.

Abstract

Poland was among vocal critics of the acceleration and finalization of CAI talks by the end of 2020. Among the reasons were doubts about the timing and political circumstances in the EU such as the role of Germany as a driving force for CAI due to its economic dependence on China, and Commission mandate for talks that was granted several years ago in a very different situation both in China and Europe. Poland was also critical about bypassing the USA, in a sense of bringing CAI talks up to speed during the transition period, before Biden sworn. However, after finalization of the agreement, Polish government (as well as the biggest opposition party) presents a rather positive assessment of CAI and opts for ratification. Notwithstanding, all Polish MEPs have endorsed the European Parliament resolution to freeze ratification process.

This research responds to an increasing volume of scholarly literature unpacking the recent dynamics of EU foreign policy discourses and practices vis-à-vis China. Drawing on the theoretical approach of collective securitisation, this article shows that EU foreign policy towards China since the mid-2010s has witnessed increasing collective securitisation moves directed at multiple policy frames, including Asian regional security frame, economic security frame, political security frame and information and technology and cybersecurity frame. The EU’s attempts to securitise China as an existential threat across multiple issue areas have been triggered by a combination of long-term trends and specific sets of precipitating events, which contributed to galvanising the EU’s collective securitising discourses and subsequent policy initiatives. However, this research finds that the EU’s securitising moves and relevant speech acts have not resulted in a coherent audience response among the EU member states. The divergent views held by the EU’s internal audience on whether China should be perceived as an existential threat have hampered the implementation of the EU’s collective policy outputs.