This session explores the ‘paradigm-shift’ in EU-China relations, focusing on the de-risking strategy in response to China´s growing influence and changing global dynamics. The session examines how the EU has navigated deteriorating US-China relations over the past decade, highlighting the evolution from economic collaboration in the 1990s to the current tensions driven by China´s assertive foreign policy under Xi Jinping. The session delves into the roots of this paradigm shift, tracing China´s evolving self-perception and its implications for global power dynamics. The EU maintains a “tripartite” strategy, originally outlined in its 2019 Strategic Outlook, seeing China as a “partner”, but also as an economic “competitor” and a “systemic rival”. China’s former State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has described the European approach as suffering from “cognitive dissonance”. As a result, and as demonstrated by the failure of the 2022 EU-China Summit, the two parties are now operating within two different frameworks, and constructive cooperation has become increasingly difficult. This session aims to contribute to a functional conceptualisation of the shift in the relationship and on ways in which the EU and China can work with each other to tackle global issues.

Speaker:

Alice Politi is a PhD Candidate in International Relations at King’s College London. She is also an Eisenhower Defense Fellow at the NATO Defense College and a Policy Advisor at the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Her doctoral research focuses on EU-China relations during the presidency of Xi Jinping, with a focus on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. More broadly, her research concentrates on China’s geopolitical behavior and foreign policy under Xi Jinping. Alice has previously collaborated as a Policy Consultant with the UK FCDO and participated in projects with the European Commission and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Moderation:

Dr. Sebastian Biba is Research Fellow at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.