Cambridge University Press has just published an edited volume titled ‘Security Relations between China and the European Union: From Convergence to Cooperation?’. The book, co-edited by Emil Kirchner, Thomas Christiansen and Han Dorussen, brings together an international group of scholars to cover a range of security dimensions and to investigate systematically how perceptions and policies in China and the EU have developed.
Over the past decade, the EU and China have expanded their relations beyond a focus on economic and trade issues to the sphere of security. Taking a broad definition of security, a multidisciplinary approach, and a comparative perspective (including scholars from both Europe and China), this book provides an in-depth analysis of the extent to which the EU and China not only express similar threat concerns, or make declarations about joint responses, but also adopt concrete measures in the pursuance of security cooperation. In particular, the book seeks to explore a range of key themes in the field of EU-China security cooperation such as nuclear proliferation, international terrorist threats and cyber attacks. Besides providing an overview of the areas where security cooperation exists and where it does not, it also highlights the aspects of convergence and divergence and the reasons for their occurrence. A key aspect of the book is the mixed co-authorship of the various contributions: each chapter is co-authored by scholars from China and the West, in order to ensure that the discussion of the various security dimensions does include the perspectives of both sides.
