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From Cooperation to Competition: The European Union’s Securitisation of China Since 2019
Swedish Defence University.
2025 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

This thesis explores how the European Union (EU) has discursively constructed China as a security concern in its official discourse since 2019, which marked a new EU institutional cycle, comprising a changeover in institutional leadership and the adoption of a new strategic agenda. The EU’s increasingly interconnected interests, spanning economic, military, cyber, technological, and strategic materials, underscore the multifaceted nature of security across domains and reflect the new era of strategic competition. In the scholarly field of EU-China relations, sparse attention has been paid to the EU’s securitising moves towards China and its corresponding policy recommendations aimed at countering China’s influence, while bolstering its own strategic position. Qualitative Content Analysis is employed to systematically review how the EU constructs China as a security concern and in which sectors, across five key official EU documents, using a coding scheme derived from securitisation theory. The findings reveal that the EU has increasingly made securitising moves towards China across multiple domains, including economic, cybersecurity, technological, hybrid warfare, and political spheres. The subsequent policy recommendations, subject to adoption by Member States, reflect an increasingly assertive stance designed to safeguard the EU’s strategic interests in a complex and evolving security environment. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. , p. 58
Keywords [en]
European Union, China, Securitisation Theory
National Category
Political Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-13732OAI: oai:DiVA.org:fhs-13732DiVA, id: diva2:1963136
Subject / course
Political Science with a focus on Crisis Management and Security
Educational program
Master's programme in Politics, Security and Crisis
Uppsok
Social and Behavioural Science, Law
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2025-06-04 Created: 2025-06-02 Last updated: 2025-09-29Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • harvard-cite-them-right
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf