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Desecuritisation as a Soft Power Strategy: the Belt and Road Initiative, European Fragmentation and China’s Normative Influence in Central-Eastern Europe

Jakimów, Małgorzata

Desecuritisation as a Soft Power Strategy: the Belt and Road Initiative, European Fragmentation and China’s Normative Influence in Central-Eastern Europe Thumbnail


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Abstract

While much discussion centres on economic properties and political challenges of implementing the China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), few studies investigate the subtle connections between the narratives of the BRI and the political transformations in the regions en route of the project. Through a critique of the Copenhagen School’s theory of securitisation, this paper brings together the analysis of Chinese, Central-Eastern European (CEE) and the core EU governments’ ideas and perceptions of the BRI and assesses what they mean for the future of the European Union’s political and normative cohesion. This paper argues that the China-deployed desecuritised narratives of the BRI constitute an important soft power strategy of China in its engagement in Europe. The article illustrates how these desecuritised narratives are utilised and co-produced actively by countries of CEE with a political aim of negotiating their domestic interests with the EU’s institutions, making the process of desecuritisation neither apolitical nor benign. As China-promoted desecuritisation is used instrumentally by the regional actors to present China as an economic, political and normative alternative to the EU, the article contributes to the understanding of China’s desecuritisation as a soft power strategy, which is both forged through ‘negative’ language (Callahan, Politics 35(3–4):216–229, 2015) and is ‘contingent’ upon recipient audiences (Kavalski, Coop Confl 48(2):247–267, 2013). As a result, new regional dynamics emerge in the EU, which are driven by the populist turn and growing demand for Chinese investments in the European periphery, which China skilfully utilises through narratives of desecuritisation in order to boost its soft power strategy in the region.

Citation

Jakimów, M. (2019). Desecuritisation as a Soft Power Strategy: the Belt and Road Initiative, European Fragmentation and China’s Normative Influence in Central-Eastern Europe. Asia Europe Journal: Studies on Common Policy Challenges, 17(4), 369-385. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-019-00561-3

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 22, 2019
Online Publication Date Sep 13, 2019
Publication Date Dec 31, 2019
Deposit Date Sep 12, 2019
Publicly Available Date Sep 17, 2019
Journal Asia Europe Journal
Print ISSN 1610-2932
Electronic ISSN 1612-1031
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 17
Issue 4
Pages 369-385
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-019-00561-3
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1292864

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.





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