All on the Same Page? Comparing European Populist Radical Right Governments’ Foreign Policy towards China

Abstract Do European populist radical right (EPRR) governments converge in their engagement with China? If not, what explains their divergence? While prior research has explored populist foreign policy, little attention has been paid to their China strategies or the factors shaping them once EPRR parties gain power. This study compares the differing approaches of three EPRR governments—Brothers of Italy, Law and Justice, and Fidesz—and argues that the variation stems from two factors: the intensity of transnational business interests sustaining economic interdependence with China, and the degree of foreign policy executive centralization. By empirically analyzing these cases, the paper contributes to debates on populist foreign policy and their relations with Beijing. It demonstrates that even governments sharing similar thick ideologies may diverge in practice, as institutional and contextual constraints shape the extent to which populist leaders can act on their partisan interests.