European Strategic Autonomy and the Chinese Influence Creep: The Case of the Port of Rotterdam

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European Strategic Autonomy and the Chinese Influence Creep

EU Policy in the Face of Chinese Investment at the Port of Rotterdama

Hidde Wams - 10986103

MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School of Humanities

Universiteit van Amsterdam Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Luiza Bialasiewicz

Second assessor: Dr. Jamal Shahin December 2020

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor Prof. Dr. Luiza Bialasiewicz for her tireless guidance during this project. Her vast academic experience and unceasing kindness throughout the process of writing this thesis have greatly benefitted the end result. Her talent to ‘think geopolitically’ has strongly influenced me personally and will continue to serve as a great inspiration. Working closely with Professor Bialasiewicz has been a true delight.

Second, I must thank all the European Union policy experts who agreed to be interviewed for this thesis. Without exception, the interviewees have enthusiastically enlightened me about their policy expertise and have generously sacrificed much more of their time than initially agreed. Without them, this thesis would not have been able to come to fruition.

I would like to thank Bart Kuipers of the Erasmus Centre for Urban Port and Transport Economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, who was kind enough to share his knowledge of and experience with the port of Rotterdam. It has been a privilege to interview such an absolute port enthusiast.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents for their continued support throughout all my studies and their loving guidance in life.

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Table of Figures

Figure 1.1: Stacks of shipping containers at the ECT Euromax terminal in the port of Rotterdam. Source: own material. ... 9 Figure 1.2: A China Shipping container on a truck near the port of Piraeus, Greece. Source: own material. ... 10 Figure 1.3: Shipping containers loaded onto an inland barge at the port of Rotterdam. Source: own material. ... 10 Figure 1.4: Shipping containers carried by the HMM Gdansk, a South Korean ‘ultra large’ container ship with a maximum carrying capacity of over 23,000 TEUs (currently the largest size of any container ship in the world). Source: own material. ... 10 Figure 2.1: Different ways of understanding ESA. Source: Franke and Varma (2019). ... 25 Figure 3.1: Schematic overview of EU-China relations since 1995. Source: Michalski and Pan (2017). Stages 5 and 6 added by the author. ... 35 Figure 4.1: Top 15 container ports in Europe in 2018. Source: Notteboom (2019). ... 42 Figure 4.2: Top 15 container ports in Europe in 2018 by million TEUs. Source: Notteboom (2019). ... 42 Figure 4.3: Mammoth crane at the Hutchison Ports ECT Delta terminal at the port of Rotterdam portraying the logos of ECT and Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (a Chinese state company that produces cranes). Source: own material. ... 45 Figure 4.4: Mammoth cranes at the Hutchison Ports ECT Euromax terminal at the port of Rotterdam. Source: own material. ... 45 Figure 4.5: COSCO Shipping container vessel China Shipping Container Lines (CSCL) Star carrying, among others, China Shipping containers, while docked at the Hutchison Ports ECT Euromax container terminal in Rotterdam. Source: own material. ... 48

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List of Abbreviations

APMT AP Maersk Terminals

BRI Belt and Road Initiative

CMA CGM Compagnie Maritime d’Affrètement – Compagnie Générale Maritime COSCO China Ocean Shipping Company

CPC Communist Party of China

ECFR European Council on Foreign Relations ECI European (EU) critical infrastructure ECT Europe Container Terminals

EEAS European External Action Service ESA European (EU) strategic autonomy

EU European Union

EUGS EU Global Strategy FDI Foreign direct investment GDP Gross domestic product

HR/VP High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation OBOR One Belt, One Road

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PRA Port of Rotterdam Authority

PRC People’s Republic of China SAR Special Administrative Region SOE State-owned enterprise

TEU Treaty on European Union TEUs Twenty-foot equivalent units

TFEU Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union US United States of America

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1. Introduction

1.1. Research background: Xi’an 153 and ‘strategic autonomy’

On the morning of July 15th, 2019, a brand-new Chinese war frigate by the name of Xi’an 153 sailed into the port of Rotterdam. The frigate did not dock at the outer edges of the port. On the contrary, it sailed into the inner harbour, close to the city centre of Rotterdam, and docked almost directly next to the headquarters of the Port of Rotterdam Authority (PRA). This allegedly led the PRA and some information technology companies located close by to temporarily shut down their Wi-Fi networks in order to protect sensitive data from potential espionage activities coming from the Chinese frigate (Van Vliet 2019).

The rumours of such a reaction mark how the visit of the Chinese frigate came in a time when this new Asian superpower is viewed “with increasing suspicion” (ibid.). At the same time, however, the port of Rotterdam has had a significant Chinese presence long before Xi’an 153 sailed into the port. Multiple Chinese companies have stakes and operations at the port of Rotterdam, as will become clear in this thesis. Referring to China, a local politician in Rotterdam had stated just earlier that year that “our infrastructure cannot fall victim to foreign regimes’ power politics,” quoted in Rotterdam-based newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (Van Heel 2019). As the interviews conducted for this thesis will highlight, many politicians and policy makers at the level of the European Union (EU) would tend to agree.

After replacing Jean-Claude Juncker as the new President of the European Commission in December 2019, the new Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that she would lead a “geopolitical Commission” (Bassot 2020, 1), calling for a “stronger Europe in the world (…) that would have strategic autonomy” (ibid., 8). These ambitions were echoed by the new President of the European Council, Charles Michel: “[t]he strategic independence of Europe is our new common project for this century” (quoted in Tamma 2020). “European strategic autonomy,” he continued to state, “is goal No. 1 for our generation” (ibid.).

What do these ambitions concretely mean and what do they entail for the bilateral relations between the EU and China? And what role does the port of Rotterdam play in this story? This thesis will aim to answer these questions. In the context of the EU’s stated ambition of strategic

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autonomy (Leonard and Shapiro 2020, 2), the main research question of this study is: how should we understand the Chinese presence at the port of Rotterdam, and how (and if) has it been made the object of EU policy?

1.2. Societal relevance: why study ports?

Ports have a very significant societal relevance that remains too often overlooked. One of the main ways in which seaports fundamentally shape everyday life is as key nodes in global container traffic. The relevance of global container traffic is hard to overestimate: “The container is just like the invention of the wheel. You cannot imagine the world without it” (Kuipers 2016).

“The power of the container lies in its standardisation: every container worldwide has the same properties, allowing it to be lifted by its corners everywhere” (ibid.). The process of standardising shipping containers has been described by Levinson (2016, 170-201). After long and arduous negotiations over many years, the standard length of shipping containers became either 20-foot (6,06 m) or 40-foot (12,19 m). Both container sizes have the same width (2,44 m) and height (2,59 m), allowing different sizes to be stacked together (see figure 1.2). The standard way of measuring cumulative numbers of shipping containers is by twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), where one 20-foot container is equivalent to 1 TEU and one 40-foot container is equivalent to 2 TEUs. “The entire logistics infrastructure has been tailored to these standard containers: sea-going vessels, cranes, trains, trucks and inland vessels” (Kuipers 2016). The possibility to transport shipping containers between different means of transport without having to unpack and repack the containers’ content is known as intermodality or intermodalism (see figures 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5). Intermodalism, “in which the same container, with the same cargo, can be transported with minimum interruption, providing a seamless flow via different transport modes during its journey from origin to destination” is seen as one of the main advantages of the standardised shipping container (Neise 2018, 12).

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Figure 1.1: Stacks of shipping containers at the ECT Euromax terminal in the port of Rotterdam. Source: own material.

The standardised shipping container “has been repeatedly dubbed the single most important technological innovation underpinning the globalization of trade” (Cowen 2014, 31). According to Levinson (2016, 2), “[t]he container made shipping cheap, and by doing so changed the shape of the world economy.” By making shipping cheap, it became feasible to spatially de-integrate global supply chains, moving parts of production processes to non-Western states housing large, cheap labour reserves. This process, known as the global shift (Dicken 1986), is essentially made possible by the advent of containerisation (Frémont and Soppé 2005), meaning “the growing influence of maritime container transport on global supply chains” (Wams 2020, 5). Containerisation, therefore, has been labelled the “logistical backbone of globalisation” (Frémont and Soppé 2005, 187).

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Figure 1.2: A China Shipping container on a truck near the port of Piraeus, Greece. Source: own material.

Figure 1.3: Shipping containers loaded onto an inland barge at the port of Rotterdam. Source: own material.

Figure 1.4: Shipping containers carried by the HMM Gdansk, a South Korean ‘ultra large’ container ship with a maximum carrying capacity of over 23,000 TEUs (currently the largest size of any

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Ports are the fundamental infrastructural nodes in this global logistics network. As such, they play essential roles in the global economy and in many states’ national economies, including that of the Netherlands. For a further discussion of the port of Rotterdam’s impact on the Dutch economy, see section 4.1. For this reason and others, ports are often understood to be part of a state’s ‘critical’ or ‘strategic’ infrastructure. This will be explained in more detail in section 2.3.

Ports do not only matter for nation-states but are also highly relevant to the EU. One only has to look at the importance of sea-based exports to the EU’s economy. The European Sea Ports Organisation calculated that in 2019, “about 75% of Europe’s trade with the rest of the world and more than one third of intra-European trade is shipped through its seaports” (European Sea Ports Organisation 2019, 51). Ports, therefore, are officially part of the EU’s critical infrastructure, meaning that they are of critical importance to certain societal functions and that the disruption of any one port would impact at least two EU member states (see section 2.3). The significance of the port of Rotterdam specifically will be touched upon more in-depth in chapter 4, but for now it will suffice to say that the port of Rotterdam is the largest container port in the EU measured in annual container handling measured in TEUs (Notteboom 2019) and consequently is part of the EU’s network of core ports, being “of strategic interest” to the EU (European Commission 2013).

1.3. Academic relevance

In the context of changing EU-China relations many scholars have increasingly turned their attention to Chinese endeavours within the EU. Especially since the launch of the Chinese foreign policy endeavour (or “geopolitical culture,” Lin et al. 2019) known as the Belt and Road Initiative (see p. 22), Chinese infrastructural investments within Europe are increasingly scrutinised. Examples include the now famous concession of the port of Piraeus in Greece by a Chinese state-owned shipping company (e.g., Huliaras and Petropoulos 2014; Neilson and Rossiter 2014; Van der Putten et al. 2016; Wams 2020) and Chinese-funded infrastructural projects in the Western Balkans (e.g., Grgić 2017; Jacimovic et al. 2018; Leandro 2018; Pavlićević 2019).

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In recent scholarship on this topic, however, the port of Rotterdam remains often overlooked. Although the port of Rotterdam is clearly “of strategic interest” (European Commission 2013) to the EU as the Union’s largest port and one of the EU’s official core ports, thus far relatively little attention has been paid to Chinese presence at the port of Rotterdam, both in academic research as well as within Dutch media. Therefore, this thesis will attempt to contribute to closing this gap in the literature by taking on a geopolitical perspective. In the context of this research, a geopolitical perspective will be intended as paying attention to the role, importance, and representation of geographical space to better understand the workings of political processes (Dodds 2005, 1; Dittmer and Sharp 2014, 3). The relevance of infrastructure to geopolitics has been widely established (e.g., Van der Putten 2016; Leandro 2018; Lin 2019; Mohan and Tan-Mullins 2019; Iftikhar and Zhan 2020) and indeed ports play a pre-eminent role in such accounts.

How should we characterise Chinese presence in Rotterdam? The concept of a Chinese influence creep will be introduced to describe the current dynamics of Chinese investments in Rotterdam. And how are these dynamics understood among Dutch and EU policy circles? With reference to the EU’s ambitions of strategic autonomy, what policy measures are introduced to counter this Chinese influence creep? This thesis will attempt to make a contribution to the small body of academic literature that looks into Chinese investments at Europe’s largest seaport and will place this discussion in the context of the current debates about European strategic autonomy.

1.3.1. Structure

This thesis is structured as follows. First, a methodological justification will be provided. Subsequently, chapter 2 of the thesis will provide a theoretical framework that introduces the concepts of sovereignty regimes, strategic autonomy, and critical infrastructure. Next, chapter 3 will provide a policy background of the bilateral relations between the EU and China. This policy background will start with an explanation of the EU’s sui generis position within the international world and will then move on to a historic overview of EU-China relations, starting in the year 1975, when formal diplomatic ties were established between the European Community and the People’s Republic. This chapter will show how this relationship has developed from an initial partnership to a systemic rivalry, and thus point to the changing nature of the way Chinese investments into EU infrastructure are interpreted. Chapter 4 will introduce

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the case of Chinese presence at the port of Rotterdam. This chapter will start by providing contextual knowledge about the corporate structure of the port and its relative significance for the Netherlands specifically and the EU more broadly. Then it will move on to Chinese presence at the port of Rotterdam through stakes in a number of the port’s terminal operators and introduce the concept of the Chinese influence creep. Chapter 5 will present the results of the semi-structured interviews conducted for this study and will analyse the ways in which the interviewees, being EU policy experts and an expert on the port of Rotterdam, interpret the current dynamics of Chinese investments into EU critical infrastructures including the port of Rotterdam. Chapter 5 concludes by presenting the workings and shortcomings of the new policy measure that was introduced to tackle Chinese influence in EU critical infrastructures, namely the FDI Screening Regulation. Finally, the conclusions will be presented along with some suggestions for further research.

1.4. Methods

This section will explain the research design and methodology used for the empirical research conducted for this thesis. First, the research design will be explained and justified. Second, the selection of the specific case that is analysed in this study will also be explained and justified. Subsequently, the process of data collection will be described, before touching upon some of the limitations of this methodology. Lastly, a number of ethical considerations will be set out.

1.4.1. Research design and case selection

The research conducted for this thesis focuses on one case, making this a single case study. The approach adopted can be best characterised as qualitative research, bringing together both first person interviews and qualitative data analysis, as well as on the ground fieldwork. An important merit of such a research design is that it “investigates a contemporary phenomenon (the “case”) in depth and within its real-world context” (Yin 2014, 16). The aim of this thesis is to understand the EU policy responses to Chinese influence at the port of Rotterdam.

One definition of the “essence of a case study, the central tendency among all types of case study, is that it tries to illuminate a decision or set of decisions: why they were taken, how they were implemented, and with what result” (Schramm 1971 in Yin 2014, 15). This definition fits particularly well with the nature of this thesis, as the main research question shows. The

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research question deals with EU policy-making, which is, in fact, another word for high-level, institutions-based decision making.

This single case study can be described, moreover, as an embedded case study, meaning that it deals with “units of analysis at more than one level” (Yin 2014, 53). The main unit of analysis (EU policy making in response to Chinese influence at the port of Rotterdam) has a number of subunits of analysis. These include EU policy makers, EU policy lobbyists, Dutch policy makers, and the port of Rotterdam (as a geographical entity, an economic actor, and an organization consisting of people).

According to Yin (2014, 28), “sufficient access to the data” for a research case is very important when selecting a case to investigate. Given the fact that the process of data gathering for this thesis has broadly coincided with the global Covid-19 pandemic and the related lockdowns and travel bans, I was somewhat forced to select a case that is geographically located within my home country, the Netherlands. This did not prove to be a problem, though, for two main reasons. Firstly, being from the Netherlands and speaking Dutch, much of the Dutch-language policy data is accessible to me. This is an important practical advantage in doing policy research. Secondly, the port of Rotterdam constitutes, as will be explained more in-depth later on, a more than significant case. Being the largest seaport in the EU (as measured in annual cargo handling), this port is critical to the EU’s connectivity and economy and thus also to EU policy-making.

As such, we may understand this case as what Yin (2014, 51) calls an “unusual case” or what Bryman (2012, 70) calls an “extreme or unique case”. The port of Rotterdam, in its economic size and relative influence on global shipping and the EU’s import and export, does not constitute an average seaport. Rather, it is one of the most modern, well-known, and critical seaports in Europe and, arguably, the world. Therefore, this case may be understood as an unusual case. At the same time, an investigation of the port of Rotterdam can also hold important lessons for other cases. Many EU infrastructural sites nowadays deal with foreign investments and increasing Chinese influence (Van der Putten 2016, 338). As such, the port of Rotterdam can be seen as a common case that fits into that category.

Yin (2014, 51) and Bryman (2012, 70) argue that both common cases and unusual cases can be relevant for case study research. Considering its characteristics, the combination between

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both types of cases makes the port of Rotterdam especially relevant to investigate. Many EU infrastructural sites have to deal with increasing Chinese influence, one of them being the port of Rotterdam, which is the largest EU seaport and thus a very significant case to study.

1.4.2. Data collection and analysis

The case study research design allows for different means of data collection. This is called triangulation and is understood as one of the strengths of case study research, since “the convergence of data collected from different sources” (Yin 2014, 241) serves as a check to the consistency of the collected data (Bryman 2012, 717; Yin 2014, 241).

The empirical data collection for this single case study is undertaken by a combination between semi-structured interviewing and qualitative content analysis. The qualitative content analysis, or document analysis, deals with EU policy documents, including policy briefs and official communications. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with a number of EU policy experts, including policy makers representing different EU institutions and a Brussels-based seaport lobbyist. Another semi-structured interview was conducted with Bart Kuipers of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, who is a port economist at that university and a seaport and logistics advisor at the Erasmus Centre for Urban Port and Transport Economics and thus is a port of Rotterdam policy expert.

The qualitative interviews serve as an important addition to the documents, because they have the ability to show us a more critical and less ‘redacted’ version of what is happening at the different levels of EU policy-making. Interviewing political elites and other policy experts allows us to “learn more about the inner workings of the political process, the machinations between influential actors and how a sequence of events was viewed and responded to within the political machine” (Lilleker 2003, 208). Furthermore, “interviews can provide immense amounts of information that could not be gleaned from official published documents or contemporary media accounts” (ibid.).

As explained by Bryman (2012, 71), case study research is often related to “the inductive tradition of the relationship between theory and research”, meaning that case study research often deals with “theory generation” (ibid.), or the production of new scientific knowledge.

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However, “a case study design is not necessarily associated with an inductive approach” (ibid.). Case study research may also deal with deduction, i.e., the testing of pre-existing theory.

The analysis of the data collected for this case study will deal with both the traditions of inductive and deductive reasoning. While this thesis strongly draws on existing academic theory which is connected to the specific case of EU policy-making in response to Chinese influence at the port of Rotterdam, this study also tries to produce new knowledge pertaining to EU policy-making with a specific interest in the crossroads between critical infrastructure and strategic autonomy.

1.4.3. Limitations and ethical considerations

As is true of all research designs, this particular case study’s research design faces certain limitations. Importantly, a case study does not entail external validity in the sense that it simply allows us to generalise the results of a single case to other comparable cases. Since a single case study aims to properly and comprehensively understand a single case in its real-world context, we must consider the fact that other cases have their own real-world contexts and therefore cannot be automatically aligned with the specific case analysed in this study.

Another limitation is related to the process of data collection. Notably, “the logistics of interviewing are fraught with a number of serious obstacles” (Lilleker 2003, 207). For example, “finding agreeable interviewees, the extensive preparation involved and the cost of travelling to inconvenient destinations” might all prove to be problematic in the process of gathering data through qualitative interviewing (ibid., 213). However, these obstacles have not been too great. The interviews with the EU policy experts were conducted during a week-long research trip to Brussels in January and February 2020 – shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic took root in Europe, when international travel was still possible. The remaining data was collected later, but – as touched upon above – the selection of an accessible case took many of the obstacles away.

Initially my aim was to also include a broader analysis of the local level of policy-making. However, during the process of data gathering it proved very difficult for me to get in touch with agreeable interviewees at the local (Rotterdam) level that would consent to being interviewed for this research. The fact that much of the process of writing this thesis coincided

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with the Covid-19 pandemic has not been helpful in this sense. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of the local level of policy-making has not been possible through qualitative interviewing.

All interviewees/ respondents were fully familiarised with the aims of this research before being interviewed and expressed their consent. The respondents received a list of questions at least one day before the interview was scheduled to take place. Because every interviewed EU policy expert asked not to be quoted by name, all of these respondents have been fully anonymised. The direct quotes by Bart Kuipers have been double-checked with him before being included in the text. With this in mind, I do not believe any ethical boundaries have been overstepped in conducting this research.

Before continuing to the theoretical framework, one last statement should be made. EU texts and officials across the board tend to refer to the Union as ‘Europe’. Whereas it may be debated how fitting this conflation is, my continuous quoting of these officials and texts has led to a situation where the terms ‘Europe’ and ‘EU’ are used interchangeably throughout this thesis. I will stick to using ‘EU’ when writing in my own words, but when quoting EU officials, I will leave their preferred term for the European Union as they have originally formulated it. In no way does this mean that this thesis argues that non-EU member states automatically do not belong to the continent or geo-cultural entity that is Europe.

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2. Theoretical Framework

As the world descends into geopolitical competition, other powers increasingly challenge European countries’ ability to defend their interests and values. Russia is willing to

weaponise energy supplies, cyber capabilities, and disinformation; China invests strategically and uses state capitalism to skew the market (Leonard and Shapiro 2019, 6). Leonard and Shapiro (ibid.) of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR, a think tank) call this “the new sovereignty challenge” for the EU. Today, according to these authors, “it is unclear whether the EU has the collective ability to protect European sovereignty” (ibid., 7). But what is actually meant when we speak of European sovereignty? Providing a theoretical framework, this chapter will first introduce the concept of sovereignty and then attempt to move away from this concept towards the more nuanced concept of sovereignty regimes and explain why this concept is better suited to examine the contemporary EU. Subsequently, this chapter will introduce the concept of European strategic autonomy. Finally, the chapter will explain the relevance of seaports within this theoretical framework.

2.1. From ‘sovereignty’ to ‘sovereignty regimes’

Oftentimes the contemporary role of China in the European sphere is represented as somehow challenging both EU and member state sovereignty (e.g., Leonard and Shapiro 2019). But what is actually meant when describing this challenge of sovereignty? In other words, what do commentators such as the media, EU officials and politicians, and think tanks such as the ECFR mean by sovereignty? What will become clear in this section is that many of these commentators have a classic view of the concept of sovereignty. This section will explain the changing conception of sovereignty and start to move from the classic notion of sovereignty to the more comprehensive and nuanced concept of sovereignty regimes.

2.1.1. The classic notion of sovereignty

Traditionally, the notion of sovereignty has often been related to the idea of the Westphalian state (Biersteker and Weber 1996, 3; Murphy 1996, 82; Grovogui 2002, 315; Agnew 2005, 456; Berg and Kuusk 2010, 40; Coe 2015, 276). The Westphalian conception of sovereignty “that

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has predominated in modern political theory relies on the idea of exclusive political authority exercised by a state over a given territory” (Agnew 2005, 456).

Other basic ways to define sovereignty in this classic way have been provided by Biersteker and Weber (1996, 2): “a political entity’s externally recognized right to exercise final authority over its affairs” and by Deudney (1996, 195): “sovereignty is the ultimate source of all legitimate authority in a polity”. Sovereignty has both internal and external dimensions (Biersteker and Weber 1996, 2). Here, “’internal’ refers to the existence of some ultimate authority over a particular domain and ‘external’ refers to the recognition of that authority by others” (ibid.).

“Because the modern European system has expanded globally over the last half millennium, students of international politics have focused on the Westphalian system of sovereign states as a paradigm so much that it seems inevitable and universal” (Deudney 1996, 190). However, the classic conception of sovereignty has started to become widely criticised since the 1990s for being overly simplistic, monolithic, and historically unaware (e.g., Biersteker and Weber 1996; Deudney 1996; Grovogui 2002; Agnew 2005; Berg and Kuusk 2010; Coe 2015).

According to Biersteker and Weber (1996), we should analytically separate the concepts of state and sovereignty from each other. That is to say, while both concepts are strongly related, they do not automatically refer to the same things. “States can be defined in terms of their claims to sovereignty, while sovereignty can be defined in terms of the interactions and practices of states” (Biersteker and Weber 1996, 11).

Furthermore, Biersteker and Weber (1996, 1) argue that sovereignty is “an inherently social concept”. In other words, sovereignty is a social construct that is continuously socially produced and reproduced (Jönsson et al. 2000: 75). Sovereignty is not a natural given; rather, it exists because it is ascribed to a certain polity by society: “Rather than proceeding from the assumption that all states are sovereign, we are interested in considering the variety of ways in which states are constantly negotiating their sovereignty” (Biersteker and Weber 1996, 11).

Murphy (1996) argues that since sovereignty is a social construct, it is ever-changing. Taking on a historical approach, Murphy explains how the notion of state sovereignty has constantly been in flux over the past four centuries (roughly since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia). In other

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words, state sovereignty is not a fixed concept; it is rather a concept that keeps taking on new meanings and imaginations throughout time and space.

According to Berg and Kuusk (2010, 47), “states tend to continue as a cornerstone of international society, although they cannot pretend to be an absolute authority over their citizens and territory.” Political geographer John Agnew agrees. According to him, the “standard conception [of sovereignty] is a poor guide to political analysis. It is a “truth” that has always hidden more than it reveals” (Agnew 2005, 456). “We cannot,” he continues, “meaningfully apply the orthodox conception of sovereignty to the conditional exercise of relative, limited, and partial powers that local, regional, national, international, and nonterritorial communities and actors now exert” (ibid.). Therefore, Agnew has proposed “an alternative to the orthodox approach to sovereignty” (ibid.), which “relies on the idea of sovereignty regimes” (ibid.). Such a more critical approach to sovereignty is needed when analysing the Chinese influence on major EU seaports.

2.1.2. Sovereignty regimes

The concept of sovereignty regimes incorporates the term regimes into the discussion of sovereignty. The term regime for Agnew refers to any system of rule (ibid., 437). The plural form implies the many different possible forms that sovereignty regimes may embody in different situations across the globe. As such, the concept of sovereignty regimes acknowledges the multitude of different varieties of sovereignty that states, territories, and other polities hold, both internally and externally. This makes the concept ideally suited to helping to understand the specific case analysed in this study.

According to Agnew, globalisation has impacted the territorialisation of sovereignty, meaning that “effective sovereignty is not necessarily predicated on and defined by the strict and fixed territorial boundaries of individual states” (Agnew 2005, 438). This strongly relates to the example of container ports, where foreign companies often hold a high degree of authority within another state’s formal territory, more on which will be said later in the thesis. For this reason, infrastructure space has been described as a “site of multiple, overlapping, or nested forms of sovereignty, where domestic and transnational jurisdictions collide” (Easterling 2014, 15).

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The concept of sovereignty regimes reflects the varying “capacities of states in different global situations to exercise de facto sovereignty internally and externally” (Agnew 2005, 438). This is a strong departure from the traditional accounts of sovereignty that “accept its either/ or quality: a state either does or does not have sovereignty” (ibid., 439). Central to Agnew’s argument is the notion that “sovereignty is divisible and it seems increasingly so across the world” (ibid., 441). Different sovereignty regimes are the result of differing “combinations of central state authority (legitimate despotic power) on the one hand, and degree of political territoriality (the administration of infrastructural power) on the other” (ibid., 437).

The EU, as a sui generis political entity, is particularly suitable to the concept of sovereignty regimes. Much like traditional nation states, the EU is continuously negotiating its sovereignty, – both internally and externally – meaning that it negotiates final and exclusive, but also partial, authority over its internal dealings and external decision-making. As outlined in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union, the EU member states choose to confer certain competences onto the Union. This is called the ‘principle of conferral’ and is one of the basic building blocks of the functioning of the EU. The principle of conferral can be explained as the member states conferring certain dimensions of their national sovereignty onto the Union, while retaining full national sovereignty in other dimensions. Considering this, neither the Union nor its member states can be understood as wielding full sovereignty in the traditional, Westphalian sense.

To illustrate his argument, Agnew (2005) has proposed a typology of sovereignty regimes, including the classic (or Westphalian) regime, the imperialist regime, the integrative regime, and the globalist regime. The classic example “is the one closest to the story frequently told about state sovereignty” (ibid., 445). Therefore, Agnew alternatively refers to the classic regime as “Westphalian sovereignty” (Rolf and Agnew 2016, 264). Agnew (2005, 445; Rolf and Agnew 2016, 264) has repeatedly stated that China fits into this category. However, in more recent publications, Agnew has started to move away from this. For example, Narins and Agnew (2019, 7) have argued that China currently faces the challenge of attempting to balance the classic sovereignty regime with aspirations of a new globalist regime.

A globalist regime refers to a situation where a state exercises effective sovereignty beyond its national boundaries, for example through international institutions where this state is particularly influential (Agnew 2005, 445). Important examples of states characterised by a globalist regime include nineteenth-century Britain and the post-Second World War United

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States of America. One way to understand China as moving towards a globalist regime is centralised in the Chinese foreign policy endeavour knows as yidai yilu (一带一路), often translated as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) or One Belt, One Road (OBOR), but also commonly known as the New Silk Route.

This initiative was officially launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping (Zhao 2016, 109) and consists of a land-based connectivity project and a maritime connectivity project, together aiming to increase the Chinese-led economic integration of Eurasia and Africa (Van der Putten et al. 2016, 2; Blanchard and Flint 2017; Yang et al. 2018, 82; Lin et al. 2019, 510; An et al. 2020, 11). Although we cannot understand the BRI as a single, comprehensive project with a centralised plan (Huang 2016, 320; Van der Putten et al. 2016, 4; Zhang 2017, 311; Leandro 2018, 209; Demiryol 2019, 168; Garschagen 2019; 97; Narins and Agnew 2019, 2; Neilson 2019, 561; Williams et al. 2019; 2), the BRI has been conceptualised as a “grand strategy” (Leverett and Wu 2017) or as an emergent Chinese “geopolitical culture”, which “knits together ideas and institutions and reworks prior strategies to simultaneously develop China and integrate Eurasia into a Sinocentric community of shared interests, destiny, and responsibility” (Lin et al. 2019, 514). As such, outside China the BRI is often understood as “a tool for China to exert global ascendancy” or an “alternative to what is seen as the U.S.-led world order” (ibid.). Lin (2019, 1) has described the BRI as “arguably [standing] out as the most important nexus between transport and geopolitics.” A notable contextual fact with reference to this study is the fact that BRI maps often showcase Rotterdam as a final stop of the “route” from China.

The EU, according to Agnew (2005, 445), is an example of the integrative regime. “In this case, sovereignty has complexities relating to the coexistence between different levels or tiers of government and the distinctive functional areas that are represented differentially across the different levels, from EU-wide to the national-state and the subnational-regional” (ibid.). The EU’s integrative regime is further characterised by relatively strong territoriality combined with relatively weak central authority. Broadly speaking, the EU has the same consolidated territorial characteristics as classic sovereign states: member states either are part of the Union, or they are not – there is no in between. The relatively weak central authority is a result of the partial nature of the principle of conferral (see p. 21): the EU can only exercise authority in those dimensions where the member states have conferred the competence to act onto the Union in the Treaties.

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When talking about the issue of sovereignty with reference to China, we should not be blind to the Chinese context, according to Sow Keat Tok (2013). Even when accepting sovereignty as a core principle in international relations, Tok argues, China “could interpret the very same concept in vastly different manners from its counterparts” (Tok 2013, 4). The assumption that China holds a “Westphalian” view of sovereignty should be more nuanced (ibid., 1). According to Tok (2013, 23) “China’s sovereignty, as viewed through Beijing’s lens, is filtered through its historical and political experiences.”

According to Tok (2013), the concept of sovereignty is a European construct, and as such is a product “heavily laden with cultural underpinnings unique to European Christendom” (Tok 2013, 47). The transfer of the concept from the West to China, during the 19th Century, “was ridden with difficulties” (ibid.). Before being introduced to the concept of sovereignty, “China operated along a tribute system in the name of tianxia. The tenets of Confucianism formed the backbone of this system, where the world, known or unknown, was seen as both unified and hierarchical” (ibid.). The Chinese term tianxia (天下), meaning something like “all under the sky”, shows this idea that the whole world was unified (Zhao 2006, 33). “China, as socio-politico-cultural entity, was deemed centre of this tianxia cosmos – hence the name “middle kingdom.” Other socio-politico-cultural entities were placed around and under China according to their affinities to this system” (Tok 2013, 47). After China actively imported the concept of sovereignty during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), the residual culture of tianxia remained influential (Zhao 2006, 29; Tok 2013, 47). The translation of the English word ‘sovereignty’ to the Chinese zhuquan (主权) “was far more than just a straightforward process” (ibid.). Since the concept of sovereignty did not yet exist in China, “the result was the formation of a term that was adapted to the cultural setting in which it was created, rather than a literal translation from the original language” (ibid.). The new Chinese term for sovereignty became “a manifestation of power and as a “right.”” (ibid., 47-48). Therefore, by sovereignty, “the Chinese and the West may have been speaking of the same idea of supreme authority, but coming from different value systems” (ibid., 48). This discussion on different value systems between China and the West and the resulting differing views on sovereignty is further developed in the next chapter (p. 35), when the Chinese worldview of ‘sovereignism’ is explained.

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2.2. Strategic autonomy

According to some explanations, “capacity and material resources are essential to the exercise of sovereignty” (Segal 2020, 94). Capacity and material resources determine a state’s “capacity to act” or “strategic sovereignty” (Leonard and Shapiro 2019). Over the recent years a buzzword that has increasingly been used among EU policy circles and think tanks to describe this is strategic autonomy (e.g., Drent 2018; Fiott; 2018; Franke and Varma 2019; Grevi 2019; Hellendoorn 2020; Michel 2020). This term has been used in communications by the European Council, European Parliament, and the EEAS (Franke and Varma 2019). It also features prominently in the 2016 EUGS (ibid.): “[t]he Strategy nurtures the ambition of strategic autonomy for the European Union” (EU 2016).

An example of how important this term has become of was given during a speech by President of the European Council Charles Michel, who said it was “more important now than ever for us to choose strategic autonomy for Europe” (Michel 2020). What is meant by strategic autonomy, though? Strategic autonomy was summarised by Charles Michel (2020) as “less dependence, more influence.” According to Michel (2020), European strategic autonomy should have three objectives: 1) stability, 2) disseminating EU standards, and 3) promoting EU values. Stability, according to Michel, refers to the combination of physical security, environmental security, economic security, and social security. Notably, economic security “also means securing our supply of critical resources” (ibid.). In this explanation, therefore, the port of Rotterdam, as part of the ECI, plays a significant role in the objectives of EU strategic autonomy.

According to a recent study by the ECFR, EU strategic autonomy (ESA) is “one of many concepts that seek to promote a more capable, independent EU at a time of growing geopolitical competition” (Franke and Varma 2019). “ESA initiatives entail closer, more efficient security cooperation between member states and a greater focus on the threats to Europe that NATO does not address” (ibid.). “Failure to substantially advance strategic autonomy through concrete achievements […] would relegate Europe to strategic dependence. In a world of greater competition and rising nationalism, this is not a sustainable political condition” (Grevi 2019, 4).

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However, “ESA remains vague partly by design” (Franke and Varma 2019), meaning that the concept is meant to inspire, while leaving room for interpretation among different EU institutions and member states. This vagueness has created confusion within the EU around how to understand ESA (see figure 2.3, Fiott 2018, 1; Franke and Varma 2019). For example, some member states largely understand ESA to be about decision-making autonomy, while other member states understand it to be about autonomy of action, “which requires military and civilian capabilities and operational readiness” (Franke and Varma 2019). Yet other member states understand ESA to be about information autonomy, which entails such dimensions as intelligence and data collection (ibid.).

Type: Requires:

Decision-making autonomy - Political will

- A well-functioning decision-making process Autonomy of action - Military capabilities

- Civilian capabilities - Operational readiness Information autonomy - Intelligence

- Data collection and analysis - Data protection

Figure 2.1: Different ways of understanding ESA. Source: Franke and Varma (2019).

It may be argued that ports play an essential role in all three ways of understanding ESA. For autonomy of action, ports are important strategic infrastructural sites, where military and civilian capabilities are centralised. With reference to information autonomy, ports have important intelligence functions (Garrick 2020; Russel and Berger 2020, 35). The relation between decision-making autonomy and ports is less direct, but here the recent concession by Chinese state company COSCO Shipping of the Piraeus Port Authority in Greece may serve as a clarification. After this Chinese company had consolidated its presence at Greece’s biggest and most important seaport, Greece has notably blocked a common EU statement condemning China’s human rights record at the United Nations in 2017 (Emmott and Koutantou 2017). Some commentators have pointed to the increased Chinese influence on Greece’s economy through the concession of Piraeus as an important factor in reducing Greek political will to criticise either the PRC or the Communist Party of China (e.g., Denyer 2017).

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In the ECFR report, “the China dimension” is included as a section and the report shows that certain important EU member states specifically feature China in their national strategic autonomy discussions, such as France, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom, which presently is no longer part of the EU (Franke and Varma 2019). The Netherlands does not feature China in its domestic strategic autonomy discussions, according to this ECFR report.

2.2.1. The Sinatra Doctrine

Strongly related to the concept of strategic autonomy is the “Sinatra doctrine”. The Sinatra doctrine is a concept coined after the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP or ‘the High Representative’), Josep Borrell, argued that the EU should do things “its own way” (Borrell 2020, 7), a reference to the famous Frank Sinatra song My Way. According to Borrell, he could also have said “that Europe must increase its strategic autonomy or its sovereignty” (ibid.).

The Sinatra doctrine specifically refers to the EU’s position vis-à-vis the United States on the one hand, and China on the other (ibid.). As explained in the next chapter of this thesis, the EU’s relationship with China is currently at a point of crisis. Even though the EU is dependent on China in certain areas, such as trade and global governance issues like climate change, the EU has declared China a “systemic rival” (European Commission and the High Representative 2019, 1).

The EU’s relationship with the United States, on the other hand, is of a different type. “Our lengthy common history and shared values with the US mean that we are closer to Washington than we are to Beijing” (Borrell 2020, 7). Since a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the development of contemporary EU-US relations would (at least) be a thesis of its own, it will suffice here to say that the relations between the EU and the US have changed considerably as a result of the Trump presidency, “an openly hostile US president who has gone so far as to declare the EU to be a foe” (Franke and Varma 2019). This is one of the reasons for Borrell to come up with the Sinatra doctrine and for multiple EU institutions and policy makers to emphasise the need for strategic autonomy, as is shown by the following quote from European Council President Charles Michel: “When it comes to our alliance with the United States, beyond our values and historical ties, we cannot ignore an increasing number of geopolitical

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choices that run contrary to Europe’s interests. Weakening multilateralism. Withdrawing from the Paris Agreements. Pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. Flirting with protectionism” (Michel 2020). Although cooperation “with the US within NATO is still crucial for European defence, […] to be able to continue taking political decisions autonomously as Europeans”, the EU needs “to invest in strategic sovereignty” (Borrell 2020, 7-8).

In short, the Sinatra doctrine refers to the idea that the EU should be able to take foreign policy decisions autonomously from either the US or China – and independently from the changing dynamics between the US and China. In other words, it refers to the EU’s ambition of strategic autonomy with a specific reference to the triangular relationship between the EU, the US, and China.

2.3. Ports as ‘critical infrastructure’

Contemporary infrastructure space has been described as a “secret weapon” (Easterling 2014, 15), because it is so consequential to everyday life while at the same time remaining relatively invisible to the larger public. This description fits especially well to container ports. While oftentimes located in areas where the larger public will not come into close contact with them on a day-to-day basis, these infrastructural sites have a fundamental impact on people’s lives and the global economy. “Major international gateway and corridor infrastructures such as ports, airports and key rail routes are crucially important to the exports and imports of all the products and resources of modern-day economies” (OECD 2012, 3). Furthermore, ports are also infrastructure spaces with essential national security functions (Dodd 2012, 1; Mohammadi 2018, 1). In other words, since ports are “vital” to “economic and national security” (Kramek 2013, 2), ports are essential factors for a state’s sovereignty. Therefore, ports are often described as part of a state’s strategic infrastructure (e.g., OECD 2012) or critical infrastructure (e.g., Kramek 2013; Mohammadi 2018).

Not only in academia are seaports considered to be part of nation states’ critical infrastructure. The EU formally agrees that its seaports are part of the Union’s critical infrastructure. The EU’s official term for its critical infrastructure is ‘European critical infrastructure’ (ECI). The Council of the EU has defined critical infrastructure as “an asset, system or part thereof located in Member States which is essential for the maintenance of vital societal functions, health,

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safety, security, economic or social well-being of people” (Council of the EU 2008) and the European Commission defines ECI as “critical infrastructure located in EU states, the disruption or destruction of which would have a significant impact on at least two EU states” (European Commission 2020a).

ECI is divided into two major sectors, being I) energy and II) transport. The fifth subsector included in the sector of transport is subsector 8: ocean and short-sea shipping and ports. As such, the EU’s ports are formally included in the list of ECI, underscoring the argument posed above that ports do not constitute any regular infrastructure, but in fact are part of critical infrastructure, not only of a nation state but also of the Union at large.

This study deals with the specific case of the port of Rotterdam. All ports are part of the ECI, but the port of Rotterdam is a special case. The port of Rotterdam is one of the so-called ‘core ports’ identified by the European Commission (2013), meaning that it is seen as one of those ports that are “of strategic interest” (ibid.) to the EU. If ports are essential for a nation state’s sovereignty, for the EU the core ports such as Rotterdam are essential for the Union’s strategic autonomy.

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3. Policy Background: EU-China Relations

This chapter will provide an important contextual framework of the bilateral relations between the EU and the PRC. This relationship is broadly understood to be one of the most significant ones within the international arena (Brennan and Phelan 2016, 2; Chen 2016, 789; Zhang 2016, 463; Gabriel and Schmelcher 2018, 26): “China and the EU constitute two of the three largest entities in today’s world in terms of aggregate population, military spending and economic size” (Chen 2016, 788). Moreover, “given the significance of the EU and China in the context of the global economy, the maintenance of a harmonious relationship between the two parties is of critical importance for the stability and welfare of the global economy (Brennan and Phelan 2016, 2). Since this study examines interactions between the EU and China, it is important to properly understand this globally significant bilateral relationship. First, this section will explain how the EU positions itself in the international arena, how it acts externally, and how this is presently undergoing some change. Before moving on to the most recent developments in EU-China relations, a short historic overview will be presented, starting in the year 1975.

3.1. The EU as an external actor: from a normative power to a strategic actor?

Before trying to gain a better understanding of EU-China relations, it is, first of all, important to stress that the EU and China are two very different actors within the international arena. This difference was summarised by Chinese scholar Chen Zhimin as a “post-sovereign union versus a sovereign state” (Chen 2016, 782). The topic of the EU’s position within international relations remains an interesting one, since international relations deals with the interactions between nation-states. Whereas China is a sovereign nation-state that is fully in control of its own foreign relations, the EU is by no means a state. Rather, it “is a union of nation-states, a hybrid collective actor” (ibid.). The term sui generis is often used to refer to the EU to denote that there “is a widespread perception that the European Union represents something new in world politics, at the same time as there is little consensus as to what kind of political creature it represents” (Jönsson et al. 2000, 122).

As touched upon in chapter 2, the EU’s functioning in world politics is based on the principle of conferral, which is explained in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). “Under the principle of conferral, the Union shall act only within the limits of the competences

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conferred upon it by the Member States in the Treaties to attain the objectives set out therein. Competences not conferred upon the Union in the Treaties remain with the Member States” (Article 5 TEU). In other words, EU institutions are only allowed to act in those dimensions where the member states have conferred the competence to act onto the EU. There are three types of EU competence. When the EU institutions hold the exclusive competence to act without member state interference, we speak of exclusive competence. When the EU institutions share the competence to act with the member states, we speak of shared competence. When member states have the exclusive competence to act and the union does not hold competence to act, we speak of national competence. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) specifies which competences are conferred onto the Union by the member states. In some areas of EU foreign policy, the Union holds exclusive competence, such as in negotiating and concluding international trade agreements (Article 3 TFEU); whereas in other areas of foreign policy, the EU shares the competence to act with the member states, such as in the areas of energy, transport, and freedom, security and justice (Article 4 TFEU).

EU foreign policy is described as “multi-method”, meaning that it exists of different methods of developing foreign policy, namely the “intergovernmental method” and the “community method” (Keukeleire and Delreux 2014, 16). The intergovernmental method refers to situations where the member states “retain control over the development of foreign policy through the dominant position of the European Council and the Council of Ministers and through the predominance of unanimity in decision-making” (ibid.). The community method, on the other hand, “is based on an institutional equilibrium between the Council of the EU (‘the Council’), the Commission, the European Parliament (EP) and the Court of Justice, and on the possibility of majority voting for most decisions in the Council” (ibid., 16-17). “EU foreign policy is developed through both the interaction and symbiosis between the two methods” (ibid., 17).

In trying to understand its external actions, the EU has often been described as a “civilian power” or a “normative power” (Manners 2002; Sjursen 2006; Forsberg 2011; Mattlin 2012; Kavalski 2013; Michalski and Nilsson 2019). It is not the aim or scope of this thesis to get into this vast body of scholarly literature, but the basic assumption is that the EU has long been strongly focused on the export of its fundamental norms and values in its foreign relations and endeavours through practices of soft power and economic diplomacy, rather than through traditional ‘great power’ realist foreign policy. “Since the early 2000s, the EU’s international

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role conception has encompassed a vision of a rule-based international system founded on multilateralism, good governance, rule of law, human rights, and democracy” (Michalski and Nilsson 2017, 434). In EU-China relations, the EU’s normative external approach has often led to difficulties in the relationship between the two parties (Holslag 2011; Men 2011; Mattlin 2012; Crookes 2013; Michalski and Nilsson 2019).

3.1.1. The Lisbon Treaty

Apart from being named a civilian or normative power, the EU has also been dubbed a “divided power”, since the EU’s foreign policy has long been understood as being strongly divided as a result of the differences in approaches and interests between major EU member states such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (Wagnsson 2010). These differences come into play especially in the intergovernmental method of foreign policy making, i.e., in areas where the EU shares competence to act with the member states. This was one of the main reasons for the EU to pursue change in its foreign policy-making through the Treaty of Lisbon.

In December 2007, the Treaty of Lisbon was ratified by the EU member states, before entering into force two years later in December 2009. This “revolutionary” (Petrov et al. 2012, 1) treaty brought many changes to the EU’s external relations, including the establishment of a European External Action Service (EEAS) supporting a High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who would function more or less like an EU minister of foreign affairs (Vanhoonacker and Reslow 2010, 1). This way, “a process that started in the 1970s as a rather loose form of foreign policy cooperation has become formalized and institutionalized, with the centre of gravity gradually moving from the national capitals to Brussels” (Petrov et al. 2012, 1).

In keeping with this post-Lisbon trend of increasing foreign policy cooperation, then High Representative Federica Mogherini presented a new “global strategy” for the EU’s common foreign and security policy in 2016, by the name of Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe (EU 2016). Commonly referred to as the EU Global Strategy (EUGS), this document stressed the need for a more strategically oriented, less soft-power oriented, and more “joined-up”, or collectively acting, EU foreign policy. In short, it calls for “a stronger Europe” (ibid., 7). In her foreword, Mogherini stated that “the idea that Europe is an exclusively “civilian power” does not do justice to an evolving reality” (ibid., 4). “In this fragile world,” the EUGS

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continues, “soft power is not enough, we must enhance our credibility in security and defence” (ibid., 44).

This change of the EU’s external attitude from a normative foreign policy actor towards a more united and strategically oriented foreign policy actor was again pronounced when the new European Commission of President Ursula von der Leyen declared itself the “geopolitical Commission” (Bayer 2019), stressing the “the need for Europe to be stronger, more united and more strategic in the way it thinks, acts and speaks” (Von der Leyen 2020). But how have these developments in EU foreign policy influenced EU-China relations? The next section will deal with this question.

3.2. Historic overview of EU-China relations since 1975

The EU (then the European Community) and the PRC formally established diplomatic relations with each other in 1975 (Men 2011, 544-45; Zhang 2012, 94; Crookes 2013, 648). Since then, “bilateral relations were strengthened by economic cooperation and rapidly growing trade” (Men 2011, 545). The close relationship between the EU and China in the dimensions of economics and trade, however, has been described to be “mismatched” with the much slower pace in the development of political relations between the two entities (ibid.).

“The first steps towards structured relations were taken in the early 1990s as China gradually emerged from the international isolation caused by the violent crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989” (Michalski and Pan 2017, 618). These steps were taken in the context of a renewed European interest in Asia, where China was emerging as a major power (ibid.). Since the second half of the 1990s, the EU and China started working on a so-called “partnership” (European Commission 1998). Michalski and Pan (2017) have identified four periods in the development of this partnership between the EU and China. These four periods form the basic historical framework of the development of EU-China relations between 1995 and 2014 that I will stick to. After explaining these four periods, I will suggest adding fifth and sixth periods to this historic development. Section 3.3 will cover these two most recent stages.

The first period was the creation of the EU-China partnership between 1995 and 2002 (Michalski and Pan 2017, 618). In 1995, the European Commission “launched a long-term

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policy for relations between Europe and China” (ibid.). “In this early period, the EU took the role as the leading partner suggesting the setting-up of the partnership to assist in China’s modernization” (ibid.). The policy views of the European Commission were laid down in the Communications of 1995 (A Long Term Policy for China-Europe Relations, European Commission 1995), 1998 (Building a Comprehensive Partnership with China, European Commission 1998), and 2001 (EU Strategy towards China: Implementation of the 1998 Communication and Future Steps for a more Effective EU Policy, European Commission 2001). The EU aimed to integrate China into the international community, both economically and politically (Michalski and Pan 2017, 618). In keeping with its normative external approach, the EU aimed to support China’s “transition to an open society based on the rule of law and respect for human rights” (European Commission 1998, 9-10).

The second period identified by Michalski and Pan (2017) is the period between 2003 and 2005. This period “is often dubbed the ‘honeymoon’ of EU-China relations” (ibid., 619). This period came just after the publishing of a new communication by the European Commission (A Maturing Partnership – Shared Interests and Challenges in EU-China Relations, European Commission 2003). “Attempts to move beyond a commercial and economic relationship to a deeper political and security partnership reached a peak in 2003” (Maher 2016, 961). During this phase, “the EU and China entertained high hopes towards the partnership” (Michalski and Pan 2017, 619). Nonetheless, “this relative harmony was soon to be shattered” (ibid., 621).

The next period, between 2006 and 2009, was characterised by “disillusionment and a near breakdown” of the EU-China strategic partnership (ibid.). This was a result of a number of circumstances, among which the “failure of the EU to lift the arms export ban to China in 2005, despite advanced plans to this end” (ibid.), which had a strong impact on the Chinese’s “perception of the EU and its place in the world as it proved to China that the EU was less independent vis-à-vis the US than it had anticipated (…) Similarly, the EU’s refusal to accord China market economy status continued to be of importance both materially and symbolically” (ibid.). Furthermore, China’s international position as a world power “was further cemented” (ibid.). The result of this was that “China’s dependence on the EU to socialize it into the world community had diminished and with that the EU’s ability to diffuse its norms and worldviews upon China” (ibid.). In its new communication (EU – China: Closer Partners, Growing Responsibilities, European Commission 2006), the European Commission stated that with regard to the EU-China human rights dialogue “the EU’s expectations – which have increased

European Strategic Autonomy and the Chinese Influence Creep: The Case of the Port of Rotterdam