The EU in the AIIB: taming China’s influence from within. Egmont Security Policy Brief No. 86 May 2017

With the recent approval of the membership request of Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Ireland and Romania, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will soon count 20 EU countries among its members. But how could the EU make the most of this presence in the bank? Apart from direct business opportunities for its private sector, there are strategic, long-term considerations too. It will be imperative that the EU exploit the link between the AIIB and the Belt and Road Initiative and ensure that the bank’s functioning remains consistent with EU development standards through a carefully co-ordinated voice within the institution

The BRI and China's Soft Power in Europe: Why Chinese Narratives (Initially) Won

The article aims to contribute to our understanding of China's soft power in Europe and the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in this regard. We conduct analyses of two leading newspapers in the United Kingdom, in Spain, and in Poland to discover how the BRI was framed there in the period from mid-2013 to mid-2017. The empirical results show that the media reported about the initiative quite positively - especially compared to the general media picture of China in Europe - and to a considerable extent followed Chinese narratives of economic opportunities while overlooking geopolitical and security worries. Theories of "journalistic routines" and linguistic "affective sticking points" will be suggested as possible explanations of these dynamics, highlighting both the fact that Chinese narratives outnumbered European ones in the initial period quantitatively, and were able to offer something that resonated with the audience qualitatively

Studying Chinese Foreign Policy Narratives: Introducing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Conferences Corpus

The paper presents an original corpus of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conferences. The dataset is a unique source of information on official positions and diplomatic narratives of China mapping almost two decades of its foreign policy discourse. The corpus contains almost 23 000 question – answer dyads from 2002 to 2020 ready to be used for analytical purposes. We argue the dataset is an important contribution to the scholarship on Chinese foreign policy stimulating further research using corpus based methods while employing both qualitative and quantitative strategies. We demonstrate possible applications of the corpus with two case studies: first maps the diplomatic discourse towards the US under the presidency of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping (employing quantitative tools), while second analyzes narratives concerning the South China Sea disputes (employing more qualitative approach)

Does Populism Matter in EU-China Relations? The cases of Italy and Czechia

This article investigates whether populism affects foreign policy of EU member-states towards China and, if so, through what mechanisms. In order to answer this question we examine the cases of Italy and Czechia, both of which went through turbulent relations with China in the recent decade, while also experiencing several government changes between populist and non-populist parties. Our analysis reveals that while populist-led governments appeared to be more China-friendly than non-populist, the impact of populism is not direct, but mediated through other variables, namely thick ideology, economic pragmatism, and international positioning. We propose this model as a hypothesis for testing in future research. In addition, our findings suggest a need to rethink the relationship between thin-thick ideologies in the study of populism, and to emphasise the role of ‘economic pragmatism’ as mediating variable, which has been largely missing from the literature on populist foreign policy

Worsening British views of China in 2020:evidence from public opinion, parliament, and the media

How did Britons view China in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? This paper presents new, detailed evidence of the negative and worsening perceptions of China in the UK across three domains: public opinion (based on survey data collected in autumn 2020), political elites in parliament, and the media. The worsening of perceptions of China emerged in the context of a changing and more contested China policy from the UK government and a greater level of public debate about China, partly a consequence of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper places analysis of these perceptions in the context of the development of relations between the UK and China. Together with deteriorating Chinese views of the UK’s China policy and controversy over a number of developments in China, widespread negative views about China among the British public and in political circles will constrain UK-China relations from developing in a more positive direction

Portugal – China relations: a shot in the Ddark?

China has become a hotly debated political topic in Europe and has also attracted significant public attention. However, despite historical relations between Portugal and China and the significant economic investment China has made in Portugal in recent years, no study has been carried out concerning Portuguese public opinion on China. Following up on earlier studies in other European countries, this paper reports and examines the results of a survey held in Portugal, revealing that Portuguese public opinion is generally more suspicious and critical of China than Portuguese government policies suggest

A new stable isotope approach identifies the fate of ozone in plant-soil systems

We show that the stable isotope 18O can be used to trace ozone into different components of the plant–soil system at environmentally relevant concentrations. • We exposed plants and soils to 18O-labelled ozone and used isotopic enrichment in plant dry matter, leaf water and leaf apoplast, as well as in soil dry matter and soil water, to identify sites of ozone-derived 18O accumulation. • It was shown that isotopic accumulation rates in plants can be used to infer the location of primary ozone-reaction sites, and that those in bare soils are dependent on water content. However, the isotopic accumulation rates measured in leaf tissue were much lower than the modelled stomatal flux of ozone. • Our new approach has considerable potential to elucidate the fate and reactions of ozone within both plants and soils, at scales ranging from plant communities to cellular defence mechanisms

Quantifying neurologic disease using biosensor measurements in-clinic and in free-living settings in multiple sclerosis

Technological advances in passive digital phenotyping present the opportunity to quantify neurological diseases using new approaches that may complement clinical assessments. Here, we studied multiple sclerosis (MS) as a model neurological disease for investigating physiometric and environmental signals. The objective of this study was to assess the feasibility and correlation of wearable biosensors with traditional clinical measures of disability both in clinic and in free-living in MS patients. This is a single site observational cohort study conducted at an academic neurological center specializing in MS. A cohort of 25 MS patients with varying disability scores were recruited. Patients were monitored in clinic while wearing biosensors at nine body locations at three separate visits. Biosensor-derived features including aspects of gait (stance time, turn angle, mean turn velocity) and balance were collected, along with standardized disability scores assessed by a neurologist. Participants also wore up to three sensors on the wrist, ankle, and sternum for 8 weeks as they went about their daily lives. The primary outcomes were feasibility, adherence, as well as correlation of biosensor-derived metrics with traditional neurologist-assessed clinical measures of disability. We used machine-learning algorithms to extract multiple features of motion and dexterity and correlated these measures with more traditional measures of neurological disability, including the expanded disability status scale (EDSS) and the MS functional composite-4 (MSFC-4). In free-living, sleep measures were additionally collected. Twenty-three subjects completed the first two of three in-clinic study visits and the 8-week free-living biosensor period. Several biosensor-derived features significantly correlated with EDSS and MSFC-4 scores derived at visit two, including mobility stance time with MSFC-4 z-score (Spearman correlation -0.546; p= 0.0070), several aspects of turning including turn angle (0.437; p = 0.0372), and maximum angular velocity (0.653; p = 0.0007). Similar correlations were observed at subsequent clinic visits, and in the free-living setting. We also found other passively collected signals, including measures of sleep, that correlated with disease severity. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of applying passive biosensor measurement techniques to monitor disability in MS patients both in clinic and in the free-living setting