Attitudes towards Chinese energy investments
Richard Q. Turcsányi, IIR's Associate Researcher, is author of an recent article in the impacted journal Energy Policy. This article builds on Europe-wide knowledge of EU-China energy investment relations and discusses the cases of three Central European countries’ attitudes towards Chinese energy investments.
The article "Central European attitudes towards Chinese energy investments: The cases of Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic" focuses on how Chinese investments are perceived compared to investments from other countries, and how the energy sector is perceived compared to other sectors. Media analysis, interviews with experts, and semi-structured questionnaires were used as data sources. It was discovered that these three countries dislike foreign control over strategic assets and Chinese energy investments are seen as falling into this category. The discourse frames on the general level fluctuate between beneficial and threatening at both the political and economic levels, yet the benefits are seen as greater than any potential threats in all three countries. Energy security frames are only just beginning to be discussed within national discourses about Chinese energy investments. In Poland, the Chinese presence in the energy sector is framed as an issue of availability, affordability, and efficiency, and is related to Polish plans for maximizing efficient use of local coal resources. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, China is often perceived ideologically and only the energy frame of environmental stewardship is present in a minor way.
You can find more information about the article here.
Richard Q. Turcsányi is Associate Researcher of the Institute of International Relations Prague and among his areas of interest are for example Chinese foreign policy, relations between China and (Central and Eastern) Europe or international relations in East Asia.
The photo before changes: Peretz Partensky from San Francisco, USA (energy) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], Wikimedia Commons