The Reconstruction of the Silk Road: Contesting Norms and Challenging the Cohesion of European Union Foreign Policy

This article analyses the European Union’s (EU) and its member-states’ responses to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and addresses norm contestation in
Sino–European discourse regarding the primary institutions (PI) of sovereignty,
international law, and market economy. The article combines the toolset of the
English School with norm contestation theory. The findings show evidence for
norm contestation and increasing tension in Sino–European discourse and relations since the beginning of Xi Jinping’s presidency. Moreover, the article illustrates that the BRI, while at first a projection screen for norm contestation, eventually became subject to contestation itself. The article argues that the identified
norm contestation is rooted in a clash between liberal-solidarist interpretations of
PIs and Chinese pluralist interpretations and that the variegated European responses to the BRI demonstrate the challenges the initiative presents to cohesion
in EU foreign policy. Lastly, the article demonstrates that in contesting liberalsolidarist interpretations of PIs, China is resisting European solidarization and
arguably proposing a pluralist alternative to a liberal-solidarist order