Chinese Views of the EU

The European Union has funded a project called Chinese Views of the EU. Conducted by Nottingham University, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Remnim University in Bejing, Leiden University in Holland and Jacobs University in Breman. It sets out to discover the attitude of the Chinese population toward the EU. Asked which countries or regions they held a favourable impression of, 74% said the EU, 74% said Russia, while the US scored 60% and Japan only 38%.

“Soccer, cars, fashion, perfume, historical sites, music, movies, nature, technology and beer in that order”[1] were the things that interested them most about the EU, while Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin and Marx are the four historical figures most closely associated with Europe. Only 43% thought Chinese/EU relations were good but 46% were cautiously optimistic for future relations while 16% were very optimistic. The EU’s role in protecting the environment was perceived positively by 86% while 85% thought its role in furthering scientific progress worthy. The EU’s role in fighting terrorism and poverty were scored at 63% and 62% respectively and 81% welcomed the spread of European culture in China. While these numbers are gratifyingly high, only 55% said they liked European ideas about democracy.

“The project’s coordinator, Dr Zhengxu WANG, said in a paper delivered at the conference the research showed that the more knowledgeable people were about a country or region, the more positive an attitude they had towards it. This and other factors meant that the EU had an opportunity to influence China’s foreign policy through promoting greater knowledge about the EU itself, he concluded in a joint paper written with Bogdan Popescu of the University of Nottingham’s School of Politics and International Relations.” (ibid.)

Given the Chinese government’s authoritarian grip on the information available to the population, it may be interesting to reverse engineer these findings, in a very unscientific way, and examine the cultural and public diplomacy methods being deployed toward the Chinese people. The Chinese interest in “Soccer, cars, fashion, etc., suggests the EU’s cultural diplomacy is having the desired effect, doubtlessly beaming these icons directly into the Chinese living room, while their government’s public diplomacy is obviously not adverse to encouraging an increase in consumerism. The lower percentages on the EU’s role in poverty reduction and the perception of European democracy suggests a government line which naturally supports its own political and diplomatic agenda, denigrating democracy and espousing Chinese foreign policy over that of the west.

---

[1] http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2011/february/researchrevealschineseviewsoftheeu.aspx