How China’s New Silk Road Threatens European Trade

For all the promises of mutually beneficial cooperation, Chinese policy documents about the New Silk Road, also called ‘One Belt, One Road’, mostly testify to a strong ambition to unlock foreign markets and support domestic firms in taking on foreign competitors. This confirms China’s shift from defensive mercantilism, which aims to protect the home market, towards offensive mercantilism, which seeks to gain market shares abroad. In a context of global economic stagnation, this comes as a major challenge to Europe. As China’s market share grows spectacularly in countries along the New Silk Road, key European member states have both lost market shares and even seen their exports shrink in absolute terms.     

Seckendorff as an Economist in Comparison with Contemporary Writers

Seckendorff’s economic writings are compared with contemporary writers, most importantly with Johann Joachim Becher. There are considerable differences between Seckendorff and Becher with respect to character of personality and also with respect to the political environments within which they acted. Differences in the substance of their writings can often be attributed to these two factors. Seckendorff puts significantly more emphasis on general conditions of production, such as reliability of legal framework, a stable monetary system, etc., while he devotes less attention to interventionist measures of promotion of trades. Therefore, Seckendorff implicitly relies more on the spontaneous forces of economic activity. In comparison, Becher, with his activist eand even impatient attitude, advocates the launching of spectacular projects to accelerate economic development, supporting his proposals with theoretical arguments. There are also important aspects on which their views converge.     

Examining the EU-China Relationship in the Aftermath of the Economic Crisis

ABSTRACT

This article examines how, if at all, the changed economic order in the aftermath of the economic crisis in 2008 has shaped the relationship between the EU and China. Theoretically, two prevalent opposing narratives in the public discourse are presented and linked to two crude versions of mercantilism and economic liberalism in the scholarly literature. The mercantilist line of reasoning posits that China will gain more political weight with its increasing economic strength. The economic liberal line of reasoning suggests that China’s economic weight does not translate into political power. These two opposing theoretical claims are examined by process tracing two most likely cases. This article concludes that despite its increased economic strength, China has enjoyed limited success in persuading the EU and its member states to change their position(s) on policy areas involving strategic interests.