Conference Agenda

The EU and China have contrasting human rights and development paradigms. The EU champions liberal, rights-based approaches that embed human rights in its domestic policies and global initiatives. Instruments like the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D) aim to integrate human rights into global supply chains, while initiatives such as the Global Gateway (GG) extend this strategy to infrastructural development. In contrast, China prioritises collective welfare through the "right to subsistence" (shengcun quan 生存权) domestically and emphasises non-interference and economic growth in its external development agenda, as exemplified by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These ideological differences shape their external engagements and development strategies, particularly in Africa, Southeast Asia, and other regions. This study examines the external relations of the EU and China, analysing their distinct development strategies and their influence on partner regions. Focusing on the EU’s GG and China’s BRI, this study explores the role of human rights and sustainability in their infrastructure projects, highlighting their contrasting approaches. Using critical and comparative international law perspectives, with an emphasis on law and development, this paper evaluates external enforcement mechanisms for human rights. Ultimately, the study explores the broader implications of these divergent approaches to global governance frameworks, development policies, and EU-China relations. Using the context of geopolitical competition as a background to their evolving development paradigms, this analysis contributes to the literature on the EU’s role as a global development actor and the trajectory of its policies under its broader human rights frameworks.

The EU has long positioned itself as a leading global development actor, emphasising its values- and rules-based approach and partnerships. Central to the EU’s external action are regions like its southern neighbourhood, including countries of the MENA region, where the EU seeks to promote its values and interests through initiatives such as the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and, more recently, the Global Gateway initiative. However, the EU, certain of the righteousness of its policies, tends to overlook critical challenges in their implementation, such as the conditionality, export of regulations, and colonial history attached to the EU’s relations with its neighbours and how this reflects on its role as an external and development actor abroad.

Hubris, defined as the blinding overconfidence in one’s own beliefs, offers a critical framework to better understand why the EU’s development policies and actorness are questioned at best and perceived as Eurocentric at worst, and how it opened the door for other development actors to step in. Among them, China has emerged as a regional player, offering development models that emphasize “win-win cooperation” based on bilateral agreements and infrastructure investments, such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This dynamic challenges the EU’s image as a rules-exporting development actor and highlights the limitations of its approach in addressing the priorities of its southern neighbourhood.

This contribution will examine how the EU’s hubristic tendencies have inadvertently created opportunities for China to promote itself as a development actor in the EU’s southern neighbourhood, exploring key areas where the EU’s approach contrasts sharply with China’s more egalitarian narratives and infrastructure-driven strategies. Drawing on case studies from the EU’s southern neighbourhood, the contribution evaluates the implications of this shifting dynamic for regional development, local governance, and broader geopolitical competition. It contends that China's pragmatic and investment-focused development approach resonates with regional actors who prioritise tangible economic outcomes rather than the EU’s value-based conditionality, which allowed China to increase its presence as a regional development actor. This shifting dynamic not only undermines the EU’s credibility as a development actor but also raises questions about its capacity to address the strategic and economic challenges its southern (and eastern) neighbours are confronted with in an era of intensifying geopolitical rivalry.

With the US-China-EU triangle as a critical framework, this article analyses the US as an important factor in today’s EU-China relations. From a strategic perspective, we attempt to find out how the US interplays with the China-EU on their grand strategy, strategy vis-à-vis each other and the (regional and global) issues of common concern, and vice versa. Moreover, regarding Trump’s controversial actions during his first mandate, like the “America first” ideology and the hostility to multilateralism (namely the withdrawal from the “Paris Agreement), how would and should China and the EU deal with the American influence on their relationship with Trump coming back to the White House?

Recent US actions and the reactions received, including on trade sanctions, decoupling efforts, and a retreat from multilateral agreements during the Trump administration, have complicated EU-China engagement on critical issues like climate governance, technological exchange, and global trade. Under the US-China antagonism, the EU seems aligning with US actions in areas such as regulating Chinese technology and addressing security concerns, while approaching China on climate governance with the US' inconstant position on the multilateralism. This creats a delicate balance of alignment and divergence. This article will focus on their interaction on New Energy Vehicle (NEV) and climate change, the critical areas of technological competition and multilateral innovation, to provide a concret lens to explore the weakening and strengthening the EU-China relations with the influence of the US. Drawing on the analysis, future prospects on their interactions and impact on global order will be made.

Alongside the widely discussed reset in UK-EU relations, Keir Starmer’s Labour government has proposed another “reset” - one seeking to reshape UK-China relations. This contribution analyses the evolving construction of China as the UK’s “Other” through the prism of this lesser-noticed but highly significant strategic shift. Since coming into office in 2024, Starmer has articulated a vision of “progressive realism” that stands in stark contrast to his predecessor Rishi Sunak’s overtly antagonistic stance toward China. What makes this reset so interesting is that it diverges from prevailing approaches of key Western allies in Europe. Starmer’s attempt to position the UK as a pragmatic yet values-driven actor resonates with earlier Western efforts to balance economic opportunity with commitments to human rights and international law, which, however, have often yielded mixed outcomes. This contribution investigates the dynamics of this shift in the UK, highlighting both continuity and rupture in Britain’s evolving discursive framing of China. Theoretically, this study builds on the work of Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, and Wodak, whose insights into discursive shifts provide a useful framework for analysing the fluidity of political discourse and its contextual underpinnings. Methodologically, the research applies critical discourse analysis and draws on speeches, election manifestos, campaign materials, official documents, and other public pronouncements to track shifts in the UK’s governmental discourse over time – more specifically the shift from the Sunak to the Starmer government. This contribution helps to understand how value-based diplomacy and strategic pragmatism intersect by situating the Starmer government’s China reset within the broader context of democratic states’ engagements with a resurgent authoritarian power. As such, it is a timely case study of the contested nature of foreign policy discourse in an era of intensifying geopolitical competition.