Name: Bettina Hueckel

 

Promotionsprojekt: The perception of the EU in China

 

Foerderung/ Forschungsverband: Stipendiatin des DAAD und des China Scholarship Council

 

The focus of this study is researching the image of the EU held by Chinese elites, scientific researchers analyzing foreign policy and EU-China relations in particular. This will be done by translating and analyzing original Chinese language documents.

 

Surprisingly little is known about the Chinese way of thinking about the EU. While the rising significance of China on the world stage not only in economical but also in political terms is a topic that is daily and increasingly being discussed in Europe, academic literature on China-EU relations is scarce and only a small amount of literature written by Chinese scholars has to date been translated. In addition, what has been published by Western scholars on EU-China relations tends to exhibit a strong Eurocentristic perspective. At the same time, the European Commission has made insight into external perceptions of the EU one of its priorities. The outcomes of this study, therefore, can be of relevance to EU policymakers in their successful promotion of the EU in future EU-China relations.

 

Academic articles concerning EU-China relations will be analyzed and translated. Specifically, the question to be answered is: Which factors influence the perception held by Chinese elites and what explains changes in perception?

 

The Chinese view on EU-China relations will be analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective: it is only by considering history, culture, sociology and politics that the image of the EU in China can be fully understood and reflected upon. In turn, it is by drawing on both postcolonial perspectives and intercultural communications theory, that recommendations can be formulated based upon a thorough investigation of the nature of the EU-image and its development over time.