國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

Since the policy announcement of the “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)” by President Xi Jinping in 2013, China has officially encompassed the Eurasian region into its strategic roadmap within the Silk Road Economic Belt. At the same time, the European Union (EU) has continued its eastward expansion, which it has undertaken since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Since the clear revelation of its international role as a “normative power” in 2002, the EU has instilled its normative agenda into its accession procedure and partnership programs with third parties. Thus, these two great powers are projected to confront each other in the Eurasian region during the second decade of the twenty-first century. In the beginning, the interaction between these two sides was amicable, with the formation of strategic partnerships and bilateral channels for dialogue between high-level officials. However, since 2018, this climate of cooperation has turned ambiguous. In February 2018, the German Foreign Minister publicly criticized the BRI for the political blueprint that is implied behind the policy, which contradicts European values. In May 2018, the European Parliament also backed plans to more closely scrutinize foreign direct investment in order to protect strategic sectors and infrastructure from Chinese acquisition. A certain discord between EU normative power and Chinese relational power can be observed in the Eurasian region. This article is divided into three parts: the first part delineates the theoretical backgrounds of normative power and relational power with the realization of the two regional integration projects. The second part takes the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) as case-studies in order to perceive how the EU and China respectively drive its regional integration projects via different approaches to power. Lastly, the article makes an early assessment of the two great power’s competition in CEEC.