Awakening to China's Rise: European Foreign and Security Policies toward the People's Republic of China

Summary

Awakening to China's Rise provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how Europe's major powers have responded to the re-emergence of China as a great power in world politics since the end of the Cold War. To do so, it puts forward a unique cross-regional comparison of how the major European powers (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) have confronted Chinese assertiveness both in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe. Firstly, it analyzes their response to China's increasingly muscular regional posture in the Asia-Pacific through the development of diplomatic and security initiatives with partners in the region. Secondly, it delineates how they have confronted China's inroads into Europe, looking at the measures that they have taken to tackle Chinese investments in, and supply of, technologies in strategic sectors such as critical national infrastructures, dual-use technologies, and in the digital domain, including Huawei's 5G networks. A longstanding assumption in the IR literature has been that European foreign policies toward the People's Republic of China have been driven by a "naïve" and self-interested focus on the economic opportunities presented by such a vast market, overlooking security considerations. This book challenges this belief through a detailed examination of the policies of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom from 1989 to the present.