Idealpolitik emphasizes the role of historical and cultural practices, ideals, and principles in policy-making and foreign affairs. It is juxtaposed to realpolitik, which instead values transnational activities and decision making based on the achievement of concrete ends. See, for example: John Bew, “The real origins of realpolitik,” The National Interest 130, February 25, 2014, 40-52.
Angelico Baldacchino, “Are there any potential security challenges in relation to Chinese foreign direct investment in Malta?” (Master's thesis, University of Malta and George Mason University, 2020).
Part of a group research excursion and summer school entitled “Media, Migration & Governance: Advanced Practices” that took place online in 2020 and 2021, and then in Malta in 2022. Events were co-organised by the Global Emergent Media Lab, Critical Media Lab Basel, and the University of Malta, in partnership with African Media Association Malta, The National Community Art Museum MUŻA, and Spazju Kreattiv as part of the European Forum for Advanced Practices COST Action. Gratitude to Michaela Büsse, Adnan Hadziselimovic, Catherine Willems, Clemens Apprich, Joshua Neves, Margerita Pulè, Hagen Kopp, Marcell Mars (aka Nenad Romic), and Tomislav Medak for their advice, involvement, and support throughout the complex and transformative 2020-2022 period. Huge thanks as well to Maltese scholar and policymaker Angelico Baldacchino for our discussions and for reading early versions of this text.
Art historian Erwin Panofsky suggests that documents (as the total accumulation of artefacts or traces of human-made events and ideas that survive into the present) and monuments (artefacts, events, or ideas that impress upon us a contemporary urgency for recognition, interpretation and meaning, also by) should form the basis of a more object-centered critical cultural studies and humanities. Later, Michel Foucault transformed how history itself is (and should be) written in shifting attention to either of these two broad evidential categories. His call was for a deeper sensitivity to, and acknowledgement of, the now seemingly commonplace yet nontrivial idea that there are no transparent mediums for recording and transmitting the recent or distant past.
See for example: Heritage Malta and Mark Miceli-Farrugia, “Europe's oldest civilization: Malta's temple-builders” (United States Embassy of Malta, 2001). Or, as then President of the Parliament of Malta, Michael Frendo reminded everyone in his speech to the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies in China in 2012: “There is no Europe without the Mediterranean and no Mediterranean without Europe.” Michael Frendo, “Developing a vibrant partnership between China, Europe and the Mediterranean: The role of Malta and its Parliament,” Address to the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, Shanghai, China, September 2012, ➝.
Two construction workers, Gu Yanzhao and Xu Huizhong, who died during the construction of the dock, are celebrated by the Shanghai Daily as having “sacrificed their lives during the construction of the No. 6 Dry Dock in Malta's capital city” in 1979. Xu was hit by a falling piece of equipment, while Gu died of liver cancer, offsite. They are buried in the otherwise mostly Catholic Addolorata Cemetery, a short walk from the Chinese Garden of Serenity in Santa Lucija. See: Li Qian, “Remembering the Chinese engineers who died forging Sino-Malta friendship,” Shine, January 10, 2022, ➝.
Hillary Briffa, “Neutrality and Shelter Seeking: The Case of Malta,” in Small States and the New Security Environment, eds. Ann-Marie Brady and Baldur Thorhallsson (Springer Cham, 2021).
“Melita” is the ancient (and, some believe, biblical) name of Malta, perhaps referring to the honeys that were produced on the islands. Melita is the original name of the ancient capital of Malta (now Mdina), and still the name of Malta’s neoclassical national personification as a female figure (common in the nineteenth Century). Melita is to Malta as Britannia is to the UK, or as Helvetia is to Switzerland.
Migration from Ukraine to Malta is regulated by a document issued by the European Union Agency for Asylum. See: Malta, European Union Agency on Asylum (June 2022), ➝.
Ann-Marie Brady and Baldur Thorhallsson, “Small States and the Turning Point in Global Politics,” Brady and Thorhallsson, eds., Small States and the New Security Environment.
Huawei also finances and helps run the “One Thousand Dreams” program in Albania, which aims to train 1,000 information technology (IT) professionals for the company, donate 1,000 books to university libraries, and provide 1,000 toys to children’s hospitals. Additionally, 29 Albanian government officials and scholars have participated in short-term visits to China to learn about the country's agricultural techniques, among other aspects to the program. See: “Huawei Launches the One Thousand Dreams Program to Improve ICT Education for the Youth and Provide Care for Children in Central and Eastern Europe,” Huawei, April 12, 2019, ➝.
Stephen Grey, Engen Tham, Jacob Borg and Christoph Giesen, “Special Report: Money trail from Daphne murder probe stretches to China,” Reuters, March 29, 2021, ➝.
Many Chinese state-owned companies have acquired significant stakes in the Malta Freeport Terminal, a major transhipment hub that connects Europe to global maritime trade routes. See Dario Cristiani, Mareike Ohlberg, Jonas Parello-Plesner, and Andrew Small, Security Implications of Chinese Infrastructure Investment in Europe, German Marshall Fund of the United States (September 2021), ➝.
Richard Sakwa, “Back to the wall: Myths and mistakes that once again divide Europe,” Russian Politics 1, no. 1 (March 2016): 1-26.
Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?,” in The New Social Theory Reader (pp. 298-304), 2nd edition (Routledge, 2008).
Times of Malta, “China, Malta sign MOU within Belt and Road Initiative,” Belt and Road Portal News, November 8, 2018, ➝.
“Italy slammed for thinking about China’s Belt and Road Initiative, but Malta has already signed on,” The Malta Independent, March 14, 2019, ➝.
Christoph Nedopil, “Countries of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),” Green Finance & Development Center, FISF Fudan University, 2023, ➝.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Malta: Closer Ties with the East?,” Directorate of Intelligence, 1984, ➝.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, “If this had not really happened, we wouldn’t have been able to make it up. Available here,” blog, November 11, 2013, ➝.
China Cultural Centre in Malta, ➝.
“’Our Silk Road’ photo exhibition opens in Valletta,” Xinhua, April 27, 2019, ➝.
Richard G. Evans, “Cultural Links between China and Malta.” SlideShare presentation, November 6, 2015, ➝.