Description: Establishing strategic partnerships is a key objective for the European Union. These partnerships provide frameworks for flexible and long-term cooperation with global and regional players. This book focuses on the EU's strategy toward China and India and explores ways of promoting a stronger and more versatile role for the EU in Asia.
Review Quotes: 'Europe is an under-appreciated actor in Asian affairs, but this new study by leading specialists sheds much new light on the European Union's perceptions, policy process and content, strategies and priorities for the region. It also shows how China and India are reacting to EU initiatives. A key contribution worth reading by scholars and policymakers alike.' David Shambaugh, George Washington University, USA '...this book is of important value for the international relations literature for which it can rightly be considered one of the cornerstones. It provides a valuable and comprehensive resource for students and researchers with an interest in international relations, European studies or Asian studies, as it successfully assesses the relations between the EU as an important global actor with a distinctive character and India and China as major emerging Asian powers.' Europe-Asia Studies 'With an impressive breadth of coverage and a multi-layered approach, the volume edited by Gaens, Jokela and Limnell provides a fresh and timely addition to understanding the EU-China and EU-India strategic partnerships in the light of their identity formations, mutual perceptions, and policy formulations in strategically important areas. Contextualized in historical experiences, ideational and political diversities, and varied norms of multilateralism and global governance, the book analyzes the rationales, evolution, divergences and convergences of the EU's strategic partnerships with China and India... this volume represents an insightful addition to the burgeoning literature on the EU's policies towards China and India and the relations between Europe and Asia. It is suitable for readers who are interested in these often understated new constructions of our world order.' Journal of Chinese Political Science