Uncharted terrain: China policies of political parties in the CEE-SEE region

When discussing foreign policies, scholars and analysts tend to talk about national policies in Europe. While some research has examined differences in foreign policy preferences among political parties, this divergence has received far less attention than their domestic policy positions. With the rise of serious challengers of the current political elites, there has been some exploration into the foreign policies of Western European parties, yet such an examination on their Central-Eastern and South-Eastern European counterparts is largely missing. This is especially true for the China policies of different political forces within this region.

The conference is intended to fill this gap, focusing on party policies towards China in the Central-Eastern and South-Eastern European region. Possible approaches include, but are not limited to:

• comparisons of parties within a country of the region

• comparisons of parties belonging to the same „party family” in different countries of the region / or a Western Europe – CEE-SEE comparison

• changes in China policies in the history of a single party in the region

• ideological/economic factors or geopolitical/centre-periphery aspects behind China policies of political parties

• parties’ positioning in/towards the EU’s China policy space (“towards” if non-EU member states)

• parties’ positioning towards the US-China rivalry and the way it shapes their China policy

• parties’ visions for the CEE-SEE region and the way it shapes their China policy

• comparisons of different Chinese actors’ views on / interactions with CEE-SEE political parties

• the nature of Chinese actors’ agreements / conflicts with CEE-SEE political parties as seen from China (ideological, economy-related or other)

• Chinese actors’ differentiation among parties belonging to the same party family (e.g. parties in Western Europe and in the CEE-SEE region)

Participation is open for both humanities (e.g. narrative or media studies) and social sciences researchers. We intend to edit a special issue (journal TBC) with papers no longer than 6,000 words (inclusive of tables, charts and references). For the sake of coherence, an online workshop will be organized for authors of accepted papers prior to the conference, where drafts of papers (4,000 – 6,000 words) will be discussed – these will be circulated among participants before the workshop. The conference itself is on-site only.

Abstracts (400-450 words) should be submitted in a Word/Pdf document and must include the paper title, the author’s name and affiliation, email address, and a brief bio (no longer than 100 words of the final total word count). Abstracts must be uploaded here (link) by 14 September 2026. Important notice: the server of Károli University was recently the target of a hacker attack, and the website is currently not accessible from outside the EU. Therefore, we kindly ask all non-EU colleagues to send their abstracts to Dr. (Ms.) Ágota Révész: Ez az e-mail-cím a szpemrobotok elleni védelem alatt áll. Megtekintéséhez engedélyeznie kell a JavaScript használatát..

Conference location: Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church, Budapest, Hungary

Conference language: English

Conference Committee:

Dr. Agota Revesz, Department of International Studies, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church

Dr. Viktor Eszterhai, John Lukacs Institute for Strategy and Politics, Ludovika University of Public Service

Dr. LI Xing, Guangdong Institute for International Strategies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

Requests or queries may be addressed to

Dr. Agota Revesz: Ez az e-mail-cím a szpemrobotok elleni védelem alatt áll. Megtekintéséhez engedélyeznie kell a JavaScript használatát.

Dr. Viktor Eszterhai: Ez az e-mail-cím a szpemrobotok elleni védelem alatt áll. Megtekintéséhez engedélyeznie kell a JavaScript használatát.