Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
This chapter focuses on narratives related to the idea of ‘dual circulation’, which was first promoted in China in 2020 by the leadership under Xi Jinping. The idea of dual circulation subsequently became central to China’s policy discussion and frameworks relating to both domestic and external economic development. The chapter examines the growing policy narrative in China surrounding dual circulation and traces the narratives concerning the idea that have emerged in Europe in response. The authors analyse key texts in China that demonstrate the development of the narrative, as well as think tank, academic and media discussion on the topic in the US, the UK and Germany. The chapter concludes that even though the Chinese narrative had features of strategic narrative and emphasized the novelty of ‘dual circulation’, the external impact has been weak and the European narratives supported pre-existing narrative templates. The way China is narrated in Europe is inseparable from historic narratives.
The 110 years between the start of the first Opium War in 1839 and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 are commonly identified as the ‘Century of (National) Humiliation’. Despite the removal before and after 1949 of the humiliations that had been suffered, the narrative of this century of trauma has undergone a revival in China since the early 1990s. Against the background of top-down strategic nationalist narratives on the Century of Humiliation primarily constructed around the US and Japan, the chapter addresses the absence of the EU in China’s narrative of humiliation. Given the fact that while the EU itself did not exist at the time, major member states were primary actors in the Century of Humiliation, and that the EU and its member states have increasingly engaged in actions that from the perspective of China might be seen as reminiscent of those during the Century of Humiliation, the exclusion of Europe from current narratives appears a deliberate strategic choice. The chapter argues that strategic narratives may be strategic not only in what they say but also in what they do not say.
The chapter foregrounds the signature of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Italy and China for adhesion to the Belt and Road Initiative in March 2019. Merging Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis and Somers’s narrative approach, it focuses on the parliamentary debates over the MoU and ensuing implications for Sino-Italian relations. The findings point to the interplay of a China-friendly, a China-cautious and a China-sceptical public narrative. The signature of the MoU in March 2019 signalled the (temporary) success of the transgressive China-friendly public narrative. However, the study sheds critical light on the internal fragmentation of the government majority on China issues, unveiling how fragile power relations and entrenched visions of Sino-Italian relations soon subverted the constellation emerging from the case study. Against a highly mutable international and domestic context, the interplay of the three public narratives thus urges attention to the (re)composition of the respective social bases and related courses of action in a continuous balancing of structural, agential and power concerns.
This chapter examines Turkish attitudes towards China on Twitter from 2012 to 2022, focusing on public sentiments, official narratives and key events like the COVID-19 pandemic and bilateral agreements. Using machine learning on over seven million social media posts, we explore how public and elite sentiments interact, challenging narrative control assumptions. Turkish social media posts mostly express negative sentiments towards China from 2007 to 2020, influenced by major sociopolitical events and intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Parliamentary speeches from major parties supplement these findings, yet no clear influence direction between politicians and the public emerges in shaping China-related social media narratives. Our study underscores the significance of understanding both elite and public sentiments within Turkey’s hybrid regime context.
For a long time, European political leaders explicitly welcomed and pushed for the strengthening of collaboration with Chinese higher education institutions. However, this approach has changed considerably in the past few years, particularly during the presidency of Xi Jinping, to the extent that such collaborations are often portrayed as threats to national security. This chapter argues that news media are key actors in agenda setting and framing issues, making them instrumental in the formation and transmission of narratives. Through an analysis of German and UK media reporting on academic collaboration with China between 2013 and 2022, the chapter demonstrates the changing use of keywords, identifying significant shifts in the narratives surrounding the topic.
Uncertain times invite individuals and societies to adjust the narratives they use to relate to self and other. In the Introduction to this volume, I outline the narrative approach to relations between Europe and China and address three questions that animate the volume: how we can understand the role of stories in these relations; how a narrative perspective aids these efforts; and what a narrative perspective adds to the conduct of these relations. Regarding the first question of relations, I discuss four different conceptions of narrative that are grounded in structure, agency, identity and power. Regarding the second question, I note that the narrative approach can address the irrevocably perspectival character of social inquiry and combat reification, provided we play close attention to the link between methodology and methods. Finally, on the implications for practice, I argue that the narrative approach requires us to carefully consider the scholar’s role in the politics of Europe–China relations and question stories that restrict public debate and close off reasonable policy choices.
This chapter focuses on the development of the discourse on Sino-Serbian friendship in the past several decades, with the aim of exploring how narratives reflect EU and Chinese approaches to cultural diversity in international relations. The first decades of the 21st century have seen significant geoeconomic and geopolitical shifts that signal global realignments of the international landscape. As the notion of universal values came to the fore in terms of issues that globalization is facing, culture reappeared as a significant factor in international relations. By studying changes in narratives, primarily in Serbian public discourse, this chapter demonstrates the differences between the EU’s ‘hands-off’ approach versus the Chinese ‘top-down’ approach to cultural differences through the concept of diversity regimes. Examining how narratives reveal differing approaches to international relations in territories that have historically been perceived as ‘in-between the East and the West’, such as Serbia, can provide significant lessons for sustainable and nonconfrontational Europe–China relations.
This edited volume examines the crucial, yet overlooked, role narratives play in the rapidly changing relationship between Europe and China.
Its contributors analyze the role of narratives in different societies and arenas ranging from economic and foreign policy to history and social media. Emphasizing the social dimension of narrative, the volume challenges traditional state-centric and strategic approaches in international politics. It also engages with the ubiquity of stories about the “other” in present manifold crises, and underscores the need for a heightened awareness of narratives and their consequences in decision-making processes.
This chapter delves into the implications of narratives surrounding China’s counterterrorism policy in Xinjiang on EU–China relations. Economic ties have been affected, leading to the suspension of the EU–China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment. Security cooperation has also been hindered as China’s counterterrorism narratives reinforce concerns about its potential threat to European values and security interests. The chapter acknowledges the limited substantive security cooperation between the EU and China, despite a shared concern for terrorism. It explores the potential for collaboration in a multilateral setting, highlighting the challenges posed by divergent values and the conflation of narratives between counterterrorism and forced labour. The depiction of China as a threat to the liberal world order further complicates the prospects for EU–China security cooperation. Ultimately, the chapter contributes to the discussion on the need for enhanced cooperation amid the complexities of international security.
