The Impact of East Asia’s rising powers on European security: the Chinese factor

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Europos saugumas; Kinijos faktorius; Kylančios galios; Poveikis; Rytų Azija; East Asia; European security; Rising powers; The Chinese factor; The impact.

ENBased on representative primary sources as well as authoritative academic and think tank analyses, this article first deals with the increasingly prominent place that (North-)East Asia occupies in Europe’s perceptions of its security. Since China is omnipresent in these, the paper then provides a necessary contextual discussion of its current rise to the status of an emerging superpower. The subsequent analysis of China’s place in Europeans’ perceptions of and its actual impact on their security reveals that the Chinese challenge has indeed transcended the purely economic realm. Long affecting the EU by its sheer rise in the international system, China has gradually become an important security actor in the European neighbourhood and finally started to penetrate the Union itself. Brussels suddenly came to recognise that Beijing’s foreign policy behaviour increasingly contradicted not only its interests, but also its sheer identity of a unique rules-based normative and economic power. The main conclusion is that the EU and its member states, including Lithuania, were thus provided with somewhat easier choices to their long-held dilemmas on a relationship with Asia in general and China in particular. [Extract, p. 102]