Cooperation between the EU and China: A post-liberal governmentality approach
In their new article for BISA journal Review of International Studies (RIS), Evangelos Fanoulis and Weiqing Song discuss the European Union's partnership with China. In this short interview with Lead editor, Martin Coward, they give the key insights from the article.
There has previously been little said about how the European Union's partnership with China affects the lives of citizens, especially in China itself. Fanoulis and Song address this issue. They illustrate how the institutionalisation of the partnership has been consistent with a governmentalised political rationality, and how policy implementation has allowed a post-liberal form of governmental power to flow from both EU and Chinese policymakers towards the Chinese population, triggering processes of political subjectivisation.
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Full article abstract
The European Union's partnership with China has received significant academic attention. Experts have focused on both parties’ economic and political objectives and have made efforts to grasp the dynamics of the institutionalisation of EU-China cooperation. However, little has been said about how this collaboration affects the lives of citizens, especially in China. Adopting a Foucauldian epistemology, this article's key contention is that EU-China cooperation imposes a joint form of post-liberal governmental power on the Chinese population, which socially constructs empowered but not liberal political subjectivities for Chinese citizens. The article first reviews Foucault's approach to governmentality. It then explores Sino-EUropean collaboration after 2013, when the two partners established the ‘EU-China 2020 Strategic Agenda for Cooperation’. We illustrate how the institutionalisation of the partnership has been consistent with a governmentalised political rationality, and how policy implementation has allowed a post-liberal form of governmental power to flow from both EU and Chinese policymakers towards the Chinese population, triggering processes of political subjectivisation.
Image: European People's Party, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
