Commissioned Book Review: Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin and Jinghan Zeng, One Belt, One Road, One Story? Towards an EU-China Strategic Narrative
| Author | Ran Yan |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211036666 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(4) NP7 –NP8
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
1036666PSW0010.1177/14789299211036666Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2021
Commissioned Book Review
One Belt, One Road, One Story? Towards an
EU-China Strategic Narrative edited by Alister
Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin and Jinghan
Zeng. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 282 pp.
£89.99 (pbk). ISBN 9783030531522
This book, which brings together some of the
most prominent scholars on European Union
(EU)–China relations, offers a comprehensive
discussion of the impact of the Belt and Road
Initiative (BRI) narratives on EU–China rela-
tions. At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic
and competitions of great powers has set the EU
to rethinking its role in global affairs and its
very identity, this volume offers ways for the
EU and China to get to know each other and
forge better future cooperation.
The book opens with the editors’ introduc-
tion on strategic narrative. They refer to
Miskimmon et al.’s (2013: 2) previous study in
defining strategic narrative as an instrument for
political actors to construct ‘a shared meaning
of the past, present, and future of international
politics’ in order to shape the behaviours of
domestic and international actors. The editors
also identify three types of strategic narratives
at play (identity, policy and system narratives)
as well as three phases constituting a complete
strategic narration process (formation, projec-
tion and reception). It is these concepts that
integrate the collection of works from various
fields into one coherent theoretical framework,
which also provides a common ground for
future strategic narrative studies.
Section I (Chapters 2–4) focuses on policy
formation. Miskimmon and O’Loughlin con-
tribute a solid account of why and in what ways
the EU’s development strategy has conver-
gence of interest with China’s BRI, and thus
suggest the EU’s ‘pragmatic turn’ (p. 35) to a
‘building block narrative’ (p. 37) that is based
on value pluralism and aims towards achieving
win–win outcomes. Chunrong Liu, however,
argues that a productive EU–China partnership
narrative is likely to be impeded by a ‘frame
dissonance’ (p. 47) between the two sides. In
Chapter 4, Zhiqin Shi and Vasilis Trigkas’ dis-
cussion of the consensus and divergence
between the two sides in terms of geographical
positions, power dynamics and political values
highlights the necessity for developing more
local-based and issue-specific cooperation
across the BRI. Although these chapters provide
useful information on official rhetoric about the
EU–China bilateral relationship, the discus-
sions remain somewhat descriptive and more
critical analysis could have been developed.
Section II (Chapters 5–9) penetrates into the
projection and reception of the BRI narratives.
Junchi Ma contributes an in-depth analysis on
the paradoxes between China’s narration and the
Europe’s reception of the BRI. Li Zhang likewise
compares the narrative of the BRI in German,
British and French news outlets and reveals how
European media carefully project narratives to
serve each country’s interests. However, a deeper
reflection on this would have been welcome.
Due to the language barrier and the lack of trans-
parency in Chinese politics, how a variety of
Chinese strategic elites negotiate China’s narra-
tives about the EU remains mysterious to the
global audience. On this, Zhongping Feng and
Jing Huang contribute valuable insiders’ insights.
However, readers may feel that their claim that
the European Model of development has been
‘losing its appeal’ (p. 157) might be partial and
overly pessimistic. The last two chapters are par-
ticularly prominent in this book with strong
methodological innovation. While Floor
Keuleers creatively applies a Q methodology to
compare how the EU and China’s contested nar-
ratives on development are interpreted by South
African university students, Carolijn van Noort
conducts a visual analysis of how China Daily
communicates the infrastructural development
narratives to secure China’s self-identity and
geopolitics of Central Asia. These two studies
successfully expand the sphere of application of
the strategic narrative framework to third parties
other than the narrator and the audience.
The major strength of this book is that it
brings the EU and China’s views on regional
To continue reading
Request your trial