Suchergebnisse

The European Union's position on "one China" has stood since the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1975. As a union of distinct member states, the nature of the European Union's (EU) foreign policymaking complicates efforts to maintain coherent common positions. Its effective "one China policy" (and those of its member states) is no exception. In recent years, the edges of the bloc's long-standing policy have started to fray as the EU–PRC relationship has become more fraught and many member states have sought to deepen their effective, if "unofficial," engagement with Taiwan. I explore these changes to the EU's effective "one China policy" by employing a subsystems framework, starting from the position that the EU has foreign policies (rather than a singular policy) created through three subsystems. Through the Normative Power Europe lens, I explore the extent to which the actors pulling at these "threads" at the edges of the EU's policy are motivated by normative concerns. I argue that the "fraying" of the EU's "one China policy" is not the result of a conscious decision by the EU as a collective normative actor but stems from shifting preferences within the national and supranational subsystems. (China Q/GIGA)

This article examines the debate that emerged in the European Union (EU) in late 2003 and ran to mid-2005 on the possibility of lifting the arms embargo imposed on the People's Republic of China (PRC) since June 1989. It seeks to offer a more nuanced explanation of the developments in the EU's arms embargo policy towards China than has been put forward in the existing literature to date, which makes assumptions about the motivations of certain actors. To do so, it examines how the perceptions of key policymakers in the EU and two of its Member States – France and the United Kingdom (UK) – influenced their positions in the debate. The article argues that an account focusing on the variation in perceptions between actors and consequently divergent policy preferences through close process-tracing of the development of the policy facilitates a more nuanced explanation of the proceedings of the debate.