Democracies constantly need to weigh up how and to what extent human rights conditions in other countries should shape their interactions with these foreign partners. Large-scale investments by autocratic states in democracies can increase economic dependence, which in turn might constrain the desire and ability of democratic leaders to push autocrats on their human rights records. Salient projects might also shape citizens’ attitudes towards the autocratic state.
We investigate whether and to what extent China is able to change the preferences of European voters with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), addressing two related questions: First, do European voters in areas in which the BRI is of great salience have different attitudes towards China? Second, do European voters in regions in which the BRI is salient have different attitudes towards human rights? To answer these questions, we analyse the impact of the BRI on attitudes of EU citizens (1) towards China, (2) towards potential trade-offs between human rights concerns and economic preferences, and (3) towards the salience of human rights in general. Greater economic interactions with an autocratic regime might shape preferences towards human rights due to economic considerations, normative concerns, or a combination of both.
We investigate these questions with survey experiments in European regions that are part of the BRI and compare them to similar regions without these projects.
