On China’s Economic Rise: Multilateral versus Regional Attitudes in Trade Agreements and the PCA with the EU

Abstract

This paper argues that China’s attitude to multilateral trade is unclear. Moreover, China assumes little responsibility to maintain international order in global economic governance. Furthermore, this paper argues that China should hide less behind the status of a developing country and stand up to its own ambition to new leadership. The paper is divided into eight parts. After the introduction, Part II deals with the criteria to be a global economic superpower, making the case that China is one of the three global economic superpowers today (the U.S. and the European Union (EU) being the other two). Part III examines China’s attitude toward multilateral trade, making the case for China’s preference for regionalism, and analyzes China’s position at the WTO. Part IV examines the current EU-China relations by analyzing the steps taken for negotiating a prospective and comprehensive Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the two parties. Part V is devoted to EU-China trade relations and Part VI to the bilateral trade relations from a Chinese perspective. Part VII, before the conclusions in Part VIII, examines the various ways to improve the currently difficult EU-China trade relations.