IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/opodis/202111.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The European Union and Korea between the US and China: Geopolitical aspects of connectivity from the soft to hard power approaches

Author

Listed:
  • Novotná, Tereza

Abstract

The paper examines the question how the EU and other countries who are in a similar position of "being caught between the US and China", such as South Korea, will shape their relationship with China and how their strategies complement, or contradict, the policies pursued by the US under the Trump and Biden Administrations. Even though Donald Trump has been more vocal in his bid to oppose China, the paper argues that there might be more continuity between Biden and Trump than Biden and Obama and the other Democratic predecessors. The second part of this paper investigates how the EU and South Korea interact with China's pre- and postCovid19 policies such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The paper explores how BRI has been countered by various forms of connectivity by Brussels and Seoul, how BRI fits within today's geopolitical landscape and whether and where there is any space for creating synergies between the EU and South Korea to offset it. Furthermore, the paper looks at other types of actions, such as the EU-China investment agreement (CAI) and human rights sanctions and how Beijing responded to these EU initiatives. The paper argues that a combination of softand hard-power approaches which Brussels have put forward towards Beijing may in the end work well for the EU as well as the US. The paper concludes by suggesting policy areas where cooperation rather than confrontation between all the actors is possible, such as health, trade, climate action and people-to-people exchanges.

Suggested Citation

  • Novotná, Tereza, 2021. "The European Union and Korea between the US and China: Geopolitical aspects of connectivity from the soft to hard power approaches," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2021-11, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:opodis:202111
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/235510/1/1761310089.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:jcmkts:v:47:y:2009:i::p:263-286 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Nathaniel Copsey & Tim Haughton, 2009. "The Choices for Europe: National Preferences in New and Old Member States," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 263-286, March.
    3. Kolev, Stefan, 2010. "Der bulgarische Weg seit 1989: Wachstum ohne Ordnung?," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2010-12, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schneegans, Tim, 2019. "Escaping the comfort zone: A three-level perspective on filtering effects and counter-measures," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2019-05, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    2. Rõigas, Kärt, 2011. "Linkage between productivity and innovation in different service sectors," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2011-02, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    3. Sepp, Jüri & Kaldaru, Helje & Joamets, Jürgen, 2014. "The characteristics and position of the economic structures of Estonia and Korea among the OECD countries," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2014-04, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    4. Kolev, Stefan, 2017. "Individualism and demographic change," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2017-04, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    5. Platje, Joost, 2011. "Institutional change for creating capacity and capability for sustainable development: A club good perspective," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2011-06, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    6. Lukin, Artyom, 2021. "Road and Belt, Iron Silk Road and Russian-Chinese geopolitical cooperation and competition," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2021-3, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    7. Effelsberg, Martin, 2011. "Measuring absorptive capacity of national innovation systems," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2011-04, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    8. Seliger, Bernhard, 2020. "North Korea's political economy: Hybrid economic institutions and the contributions of German order policy (Ordnungspolitik)," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2020-2, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    9. Seidt, Hans-Ulrich, 2021. "Korea and Germany as endpoints of the new silk road: Opportunities for cooperation," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2021-4, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    10. Park, Sung-Jo, 2013. "Developmental state in Korea (60-70ties) revisited: Institution-building for the making of 'coordinated market'," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2013-02, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    11. Ukrainski, Kadri & Kanep, Hanna & Kirs, Margit & Karo, Erkki, 2019. "International R&D networks of firms: A country-level analysis of the EU framework programmes," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2019-01, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    12. Sepp, Jüri & Varblane, Uku, 2014. "The decomposition of productivity gap between Estonia and Korea," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2014-03, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    13. Austė Vaznonytė, 2020. "The rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU – Still an agenda-setter?," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(3), pages 497-518, September.
    14. Wrobel, Ralph, 2021. "Kim Jong-un's Byungjin Policy: Support or obstacle for economic convergence on the Korean peninsula?," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2021-5, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    15. Yalamova, Rossitsa, 2019. "Blockchain angels or demons of a free international order," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2019-02, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    16. Kim, Duyeon, 2021. "Belt and road in the new geo-political competition: China, the United States, Europe and Korea," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2021-8, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    17. Panda, Jagannath P., 2021. "China's BRI diplomacy: What it means to India and India's rise," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2021-12, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    18. Heß, Alexander & Hindermann, Christoph Michael, 2021. "Trade effects on happiness in Asia," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2021-9, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    19. Go, Joohyun, 2021. "The prospects of cultural exchange to foster the economic relationship between the EU and Korea," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2021-7, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).
    20. Komulainen, Ruey, 2015. "Employer branding for SMEs: Attracting graduating students in IT industry," Discourses in Social Market Economy 2015-04, OrdnungsPolitisches Portal (OPO).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    EU foreign policy; connectivity; Korean peninsula; China; United States; Covid19;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:opodis:202111. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://ordnungspolitisches-portal.de/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.