ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that understanding how China's rise has been interpreted and debated makes it possible to explain variations between United States (US) and European Union (EU) foreign policies. It focuses on the transatlantic debate on the EU's proposal to scrap its China arms embargo. Close examination of the development of preferences on both sides of the Atlantic reveals that different interpretations of the implications of China's rise contributed to the dispute. The chapter concentrates on the period up until the end of the substantive debate. It describes power-transition theory-based expectations for this case and identifies the foreign policy subsystems relevant to this debate. The chapter further examines the transatlantic debate from 2003 to 2005 in detail. It summarises the main findings and the argument, which is that the divergence between the US and the EU that opened up between 1989 and 2003 resulted from differing experiences of interpreting and debating the rise of China.
