Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xxii, 250 pp. (Tables.) US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-14903-8.
A collaborative effort between Chinese and European scholars, this volume is useful in documenting the breadth of ties between the European Union (EU) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Ten substantive chapters on a wide range of topics—military-to-military relations (or “military security”), human security, cyber security, economic security, climate and energy security, regional conflicts, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and organized crime, civil protection, and migration—are bookended by an overview chapter and a conclusion.
This book underscores the reality that for decades the security relationship between Beijing and Brussels has tended to function as a wading pool: quite wide and adequate for getting wet but not deep enough for actual swimming. In other words, the relationship is suitable for conducting a range of Sino-European security interactions but with significant limitations on how in-depth any one of these can venture. Nevertheless, if the early months of the Donald J. Trump administration are indicative of a new trend in US security policy, the potential exists for building a deeper Euro-Chinese pool. But even if this were to occur, there are structural and normative limitations, as some contributors note. While the PRC is a single centralized state, the EU is a collection of individual states, each with its own foreign and defense policies. Second, as the three co-editors note in their introduction, Brussels and Beijing “have very different attitudes to key principles of inter-state relations” (1). Indeed, the PRC appears more comfortable in its relationships with other authoritarian states than it is with democracies. Moreover, while neither the EU nor China sees “the other side as a potential enemy or military threat” (1), each is formally or informally allied with a rival or adversary of the other, and these states—namely the United States and Russia—actually do pose military threats to the other security partner.
Consequently, to date the security relationship between China and the EU has been relatively modest overall. According to Simon Duke and Reuben Wong, “[t]hus far … the main venue for building military-to-military relations” between the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the armed forces of EU countries has been in cooperation on anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden through the Shared Awareness and Deconfliction meetings in Bahrain (33). Of course, mil-mil interactions with China occur not between the EU per se but rather between the armed forces of individual European countries or between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the PLA.
A significant contribution of the volume is an insightful comparative analysis of Chinese views and approaches to security. This provides a welcome variation to the all-too-familiar treatments of China alone or the US-China comparison. Of particular interest are the chapters on nuclear proliferation, cyber security, and climate change. On the proliferation issue, the extent of China-EU cooperation has been significant and in at least one case—Iran—via the so-called P5+1 mechanism, to reach a nuclear agreement with Tehran in April 2015. On another daunting proliferation case—North Korea—authors Nicola Casarini and Xinning Song accurately observe that “the EU is essentially a bystander” (78).
Meanwhile, security in the cyber realm has become a significant and thorny global issue in which China’s role is highly problematic. Here, as in many other security areas, European and Chinese perspectives and strategies are at odds. The EU approach, according to Sebastian Bersick, George Christou, and Shen Yi, is “defensive, legal and resilience-focused” while China emphasizes “establishing cyber sovereignty” and prioritizes “security and control” rather than “rights, openness and freedom” (169). Consequently, the authors conclude that “prospects for deeper cooperation between the EU and China remain largely at the level of rhetoric rather than practice” (169).
Climate security is especially topical since the United States decided in June 2017 to withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement. This development will test whether the potential of greater cooperation between Beijing and Brussels might become a reality. While there may be actual cooperation, more likely China will seek to leverage largely symbolic cooperation on this high-profile issue to score points at US expense. Nevertheless, there are built-in limitations on Beijing-Brussels cooperation based on normative and national security grounds. As Yan Bo, Katja Biedendopf, and Zhimin Chen note: “While the EU emphasizes the conflict multiplier implications of climate security, China focuses on the development angle” (113).
A welcome addition to the growing literature on China-EU relations, this volume also offers a fresh comparative approach to contemporary Chinese security affairs.
Andrew Scobell
RAND Corporation, Washington DC, USA
pp. 136-138