Much ink has been spilled in recent years warning us of an imminent conflict between a rising China and a declining West. The spectre of a Second Cold War looms large, we are told by several observers. The language of risks, threats and disorder bedevils most discussions involving China. Against such narratives, the edited volume The EU and China infuses a breath of fresh air. It contributes to a growing literature (for example, Rising Power, Limited Influence: The Politics of Chinese Investments in Europe and the Liberal International Order, edited by Indrajit Roy, Jappe Eckhardt, Simona Davidescu and Dmitrios Stroikos, Oxford University Press, 2024) that pushes back not only against the narrative of imminent conflict but also its opposite: self-congratulatory paeans celebrating the systemic resilience of the Liberal International Order. The volume achieves this by deploying the framework of “multiple modernities” developed by Shmuel Eisenstadt (2000, “Multiple modernities,” Daedalus 129 [1]: 1–29) to spotlight the possibility that Westernization and modernization are not identical. By applying the “multiple modernities” framework to relations between China and the EU, the volume offers intellectual resources to blend sociological analysis with research on international relations. A slim volume, it is largely easy to read and follow.
The two parts of the book help readers navigate the increasingly choppy relations between China and the EU without succumbing to alarmist tropes. Four chapters in part one of the book explain the present situation: Mario Telò’s leading chapter is a clear statement pushing back against the inevitability of conflict. Other chapters critically evaluate the prospects of a new cold war (Chun Ding) and the political economy of cold wars in general (Andrew Gamble). The three chapters in part two shed light on the possible modes of cooperation between China and the EU: Ling Wei’s concluding chapter on inclusive multilateralism illustrates the ways in which broad-based cooperation that includes the Global South is key to the EU recalibrating its relations with China as well as the US. Other chapters examine Europe’s role in preventing a cold war between the US and China (Jianwei Wang) and the role of the G20 as a platform for cooperation between China and Europe (Gerhard Stahl). By attending to the enmeshed nature of China’s political-economic relations with the EU (and the West more generally), the volume notes the dissonances of the current situation vis-à-vis the Cold War that was characterized by an Iron Curtain separating two competing blocs. The volume as a whole allows readers to imagine the EU pursuing a strategic autonomy that has become ever more urgent after the rapid unravelling of the Euro-American alliance under Trump 2.0.
The volume’s refreshing insights could have been strengthened by a more thorough engagement with the multiple modernities approach throughout the chapters: some chapters, such as the one on cultural dimensions of global politics by Thomas Meyer do a far better job at critically engaging the concept and applying it to relations between the EU and China. Such a critical engagement throughout each of the chapters would have made the volume thematically coherent – beyond being an empirical collection of papers on EU-China relations. Indeed, a perusal of the index suggests that the contributions in part two barely engage with that concept. Readers would also have benefitted from a clearer statement of the editors’ own understanding of “multiple modernities” beyond Eisenstadt’s original formulations. Neither the EU nor China are homogenous entities that have pursued monolithic trajectories towards modernity: surely a case could probably be made to link the multiple modernities within the EU with multiple modernities within China to think about how cooperation between the two can be strengthened?
Despite these limitations, The EU and China promises to be a useful resource for researchers, policymakers and anyone interested in nuanced perspectives on relations between China and the European Union. Its efforts at outlining the prospects and possibilities of cooperation between the two entities does not blind it to the very real difficulties that stymie relations between them. At the same time, it distances its analysis from the tired tropes that affirm the institutional and ideational strengths of the Liberal International Order, recognizing that its time is up.
As the United States turns it back on Europe and European leaders explore strategic autonomy in these tumultuous times, works that explore the continent’s relations with the wider world are becoming increasingly essential. Despite the many differences between realist, liberal, Marxist, constructivist and postcolonial perspectives, scholars subscribing to these approaches have tended to converge on treating the North Atlantic as constituting a coherent “West.” By considering European policy independent of the mood music in Washington DC, The EU and China offers useful correctives to these assumptions while also supplying the conceptual tools to think about alternative policy framings. Looking ahead, the multiple modernities framing applied by the volume can be helpful to understand the disjunctions between the European and US American pathways of modernity. For those of us interested in careful, realistic understandings of Europe’s relations with China, this volume is a welcome addition.
