Call for Papers: The Chinese and Europe – Perceptions, influence and interactions

There has been much anxiety and speculation about the impact of "China's rise" on Europe. Much has been written about the potential effects of Chinese companies investing in cash-strapped industries on Europe's jobs, intellectual property, and cybersecurity. Much less has been published on the expansion of Confucius Institutes, Chinese state media and other Chinese cultural outfits as forms of "soft power". More studies have focused on how to attract even more Chinese students and tourists, while only some on the political fallout of China's Belt and Road project and its way of dealing with Central and Eastern Europe as a potential divide-and-rule strategy towards the EU. Too little has been written on the impact of Chinese capital in the European film and cultural industries or the changing European public perception on China.

Yet considering all this anxiety, we know astonishingly little about what has actually changed in the ways Chinese people engage with Europe. How if at all have Chinese owners and managers changed European companies or adapted to local conditions? What difference have Confucius Institutes or other institutions made for the way Europeans see China? How has the influx of Chinese tourists and hotel operators changed the tourism sector from Paris to Montenegro? Why do Chinese students or "golden visa" investor-immigrants choose Spain or Hungary versus the Ireland or the Netherlands? Has the expanded presence of Chinese media, reality show crews and affluent young Chinese in Europe made a difference to the way Chinese people view the continent? And has it made a difference for the way Chinese ethnicity is framed by both Europeans and Chinese in Europe?

For this special issue, we are calling for papers across a broad range of disciplines, from political science through economics to cultural studies, that provide first-hand evidence of how the "new" set of Chinese actors, money, and ideas has changed Europe and Chinese ideas of it. The guest editors of this issue will be Professor Pál Nyiri (p.d.nyiri@vu.nl) at Vrije University Amsterdam and Dr. Ágnes Szunomár (szunomar.agnes@krtk.mta.hu) at Institute of World Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

We invite scholars to submit an abstract of no more than 800 words including a short bio and the description of the main questions and findings of the paper along with the methodology applied, by 30 December 2018 via our online submission system. Authors will receive feedback from the editorial team by 15 January 2019 The deadline for submitting the final papers is 31 May 2019.

If you encounter technical problems contact István Hegedűs (intersections@tk.mta.hu)