IR Semineri: “Is the China Effect Real? Ideational Change and the Political Contestation of Chinese-led Investment in Europe”, Milan Babic, 15:30 12 Mayıs (EN)

Assistant Professor Milan Babic, Roskilde University
“Is the China Effect Real? Ideational Change and the Political Contestation of Chinese-led Investment in Europe”

Date & Time: 12 May, 15:30

***This is an online seminar. To obtain the event link, please send a message to department.

Abstract: Chinese outward investment is increasing in its relevance for the global economy, and its effects on host states are increasingly being scrutinized globally. While European policy-making was ambiguous about the question of hosting Chinese state-led investment (CSLI) in the early 2010s, we can observe a recent surge of protectionist legal measures across Europe. What explains this trend among different European countries? Through the lens of incremental ideational change, we hypothesize that the rise of China as a global investor shifts the perceptions of policy-makers away from being a source of investment toward a potential threat to national security. We argue that this China effect affects advanced European economies similarly. We provide evidence by studying the shift in perceptions among policy-makers in a coordinated and a liberal market economy, Germany and the UK. By drawing on document analysis and expert interviews, we unpack the policy processes in both countries in the last decade. Despite being two dissimilar cases, both show a similar outcome in increasingly curbing CSLI on the grounds of national security reasons. Our results add important insights to recent International Political Economy discussions on the “geopoliticization” of European trade and investment rules in the face of a rising China.freshwater from seawater). Main goal of the seminar is to provide possible solutions to our ever-growing demand for energy, food, and water, global climate change related extreme events result in loss of limited fertile lands and droughts posing significant threats to sustainability of our natural resources.