Research project

Scandinavia as an arena for Chinese economic statecraft

China's utilisation of economic statecraft as a foreign policy tool challenges the accustomed distinction between Norwegian business policies, and Norwegian security policy. This opens for a novel range of foreign policy challenges. These are challenges Norway has in common with a wide array of Western countries, including the Scandinavian countries - whose experiences are of particular relevance for Norway.

Themes

The project will empirically map out and analyse how Chinese economic statecraft has been used as a foreign policy tool towards Sweden and Denmark, and how these countries have reacted to this effort. Given that the means most relevant for sheltering a country's political decision-making process from such economic pressure are to be found outside of the realm of narrowly defined security policies, we will also investigate the role of the EU in shaping the politico-economic context of the Scandinavian countries.

Such a comparative analysis of recent Chinese actions towards Scandinavian countries of immediate relevance to Norway, will provide salient insights into central tenets of how Chinese geo-economic strategies are applied to European small states.