Uzun, Darius/D.U.
(2025).
The collision of the spheres of influence of the EU and China Analyzing voting patterns in the European Parliament.
Masters thesis, Universität zu Köln.
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Abstract
This thesis attempts to determine if there has been measurable impact of a Chinese economic sphere of influence on the voting behavior of European Parliament (EP) MEPs. Research found instances resembling an appeasing stance towards the CCP when securing high-stakes infra-structure investments, trade deals and heightened FDI flows, especially through economic fo-rums like the 17+1 mechanism. Some state actors allegedly extended these appeasement ap-proaches to a degree where they compromised EU common policy towards China, prioritizing bilateral relations. While this phenomenon might have been observed at the state actor level, examining soft power influence on "direct" representatives makes an interesting case. Suspi-cions of direct influence through economic pressure, subversion and espionage have grown since Xi Jinping changed China’s foreign policy, striving for China to evolve from a passive eco-nomic superpower to an active, assertive global geopolitical actor. While some qualitative re-search and journalistic evidence suggests causality between economic ties and cultural/politi-cal influence, quantitative confirmation is lacking. EP MEP voting behavior is tracked to (dis-) prove this alleged relationship. Findings conclude that CEEC as a group is too heterogeneous to show evidence of Chinese soft power influence in voting on China-sensitive issues. However, certain Member States from both CEE and non-CEEC region showed significant China-aligning voting behavior. Countries who were more economically engaged with China, displayed stronger China-aligning voting. Contextualizing the observations with the bloc voting behavior of the European Parliament’s parties, showed strong bloc adhering voting behavior on votes that concerned China-sensitive issues. Regarding the CEEC, Greece and Hungary, as abundant qualitative evidence suggested beforehand, showed to be strongly China-aligning.
Item Type: | Thesis (Masters thesis) | ||||||||
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-787153 | ||||||||
Date: | 1 August 2025 | ||||||||
Place of Publication: | University of Cologne | ||||||||
Language: | English | ||||||||
Faculty: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Political Science > Cologne Center for Comparative Politics | ||||||||
Subjects: | Political science | ||||||||
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Date of oral exam: | 8 April 2025 | ||||||||
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Refereed: | Yes | ||||||||
URI: | http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/78715 |
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