EU-China Strategic Partnership Research Articles

Rapprochement amid readjustment: how China sees issues and trends in its changing relationship with the EU.

The EU-China relationship is entering a period of readjustment. On the one hand, the US-China trade war has forced China to seek closer alignment with the EU, and on the other hand, the EU has chosen a more proactive approach to tame China’s global and regional assertiveness. The European readjustment has been particularly noticeable in areas like connectivity, investment and 5G. China has noticed the European change of attitude and relates it to European uncertainties and misinterpretation of China’s development. While the new European leadership was supposed to meet their Chinese counterparts in 2020 and work out a new modus operandi, the global coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated underlying tensions in the relationship. A comprehensive deepening of the EU-China strategic partnership looks unlikely and cooperation is expected to be increasingly selective.

‘Soft Diplomacy’ and People-to-People Dialogue between the EU and the PRC

The aim of this article is threefold. Based on academic literature in the field, the first step is to understand the link between 'soft power', 'public diplomacy' and 'soft diplomacy' tools in order to set out the criteria necessary to define what 'soft diplomacy' is and assess whether the P2P is indeed a soft diplomacy tool in the EU-China relationship. Second, a close examination of the diplomatic toolboxes of both the EU and China will demonstrate the benefits of using soft diplomatic instruments to consolidate and further expand the EU-China Strategic Partnership. Third, as the P2P appears as a complementary new tool rather than as a substitute for 'hard diplomacy', it will be evaluated as a precious tool used by the EU and China to try and shape cooperation through governmental as well as non-governmental relations.

Reclaiming the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Through the EU–China Partnership and Cooperation Agreement: Taking Stock and Moving Forward

This chapter traces the evolution of the EU–China strategic partnership, explores the role of a PCA in this partnership, and investigates major challenges facing the two parties for its successful conclusion. This chapter will focus on two dimensions of the proposed partnership: political and security; trade and economy. In the context of the political and security dimension, this chapter addresses the troubling relationship between sovereignty and human rights and the EU’s call for China’s collaboration in building a rules-based international order and advancing effective multilateralism. In the trade and economic dimension, this chapter examines China’s pursuit of MES and the EU’s demand for a transparent, open and predicable regulatory environment in China. This chapter then points to the difficulties in issue linkages or human rights prioritisation in the PCA negotiations, and probes whether a comprehensive investment agreement (CAI) constitutes a satisfactory alternative to the PCA.

Bezpośrednie inwestycje zagraniczne we francusko-chińskiej współpracy gospodarczej w kontekście dwustronnych relacji Unii Europejskiej z Chinami

The goals of the paper are: to analyse the scale and nature of foreign direct investments (FDI) in the economic cooperation between France and China; to explain the main reasons for the Chinese capital commitment in the form of FDI in the European Union (EU) and France as well as French one in China; and to identify the conditions and barriers in the flow of FDI and the main activities undertaken by France and the EU to introduce more symmetry in relations with China. The following research hypothesis has been adopted: FDI are an important element of the economic cooperation between France and China, which is developed despite barriers including differences in potentials and asymmetry in market access. In the face of China’s growing activity in the global economy, noticing the benefits, France does not question the bilateral relations but puts more emphasis on the need to create coherent and coordinated strategy towards China at the EU level. This analysis allowed formulation of a few main conclusions. The recent dynamic inflow of Chinese FDI to the EU (including France) is closely connected with China’s measures aimed at reinforcing its position in the global economy. The dynamic and nature of Chinese FDI coming to France and other EU countries, asymmetry in access to markets, the Belt and Road Initiative, changes in the US trade policy and divisions among EU member countries pose challenges to the EU. France is fully committed to creating a common EU strategy towards China and restoring the balance within the EU-China strategic partnership.

Role Dynamics in a Structured Relationship: The EU–China Strategic Partnership

AbstractIn this article, we investigate the function of strategic partnerships as a new type of state interaction in the international system. We are primarily interested in the dynamics of strategic partnerships and to that aim we analyze the competitive role‐playing that occurs in the EU–China Strategic Partnership. We contend that EU and China engage in competitive role‐playing in order to enhance their position and status as global actors and to seek recognition of their international roles. The interaction between the EU and China is analyzed throughout four periods in which their role conceptions have undergone change and adaptation. The article claims to make a theoretical contribution by developing the understanding of social interaction in the international system by conceptualizing strategic partnerships as arenas (structures) in which international roles play out, and an empirical contribution by tracing the complexities of the EU–China Strategic Partnership by utilizing role theory's conceptual apparatus.

The elusive EU-China strategic partnership

In 2003 the European Union announced that it had launched a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ with China. This policy was intended to elevate EU–China relations beyond prosaic trade and investment issues to address some of the world's most pressing political and security challenges. Anything approaching a comprehensive strategic partnership over the past decade linking the EU and China has failed to materialize, however. This article clarifies and examines those issues that have impeded a closer EU–China alignment, and that hold the greatest potential for future discord in their bilateral relations. It explains how clashing political values, diverging geopolitical interests and priorities, and competing conceptions of world order has limited and will continue to limit the scope and depth of any EU–China strategic relationship. EU–China relations are today, and are likely to remain, contested, uneven and—apart from trade and investment—shallow, and embody a limited rather than a strategic partnership. As China's economic, military and political power continues to expand, the EU will need a new conceptual framework towards Beijing. This framework must be able to facilitate cooperation on issues and policies in which there is real potential for mutual gain, but also manage effectively the inevitable tensions and disagreements that arise.

Security threats and risk management: European and Chinese responses to the climate disruption

Most academics and policy makers agree upon irreversible phenomena affecting planet Earth’s climate – we have finally faced a climate disruption. As triggered by humans, environmental degradation ultimately threatens not only the security but even the survival of individuals, communities, states and perhaps even the international system as a whole. This paper addresses differences with regards to risk assessment of climate disruption in Europe and in China. Its departure point is that the divergence between European and Chinese approaches is based on structural and institutional distinctions. Specifically, it tries to assess those distinctions (importance of sovereignty and non-interference) with regards to methods (assessment of vulnerability) and principles (transparency and inclusiveness) of risk assessment. Initial analysis leads to a tentative conclusion, which confirms the importance of political culture in national responses to security threats (be it traditional or non-traditional). In this respect EU-China strategic partnership is suggested as one of the possibly effective platforms for future cooperation.

The EU and China in the WTO: What Contribution to the International Rule of Law? Reflections in Light of the Raw Materials and Rare Earths Disputes

The aim of this paper is to examine the contribution of the EU-China strategic partnership to the rule of law at the international level, in the particular context of the World Trade Organization (WTO). More specifically, we analyze the EU’s relationship with China in the context of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM), hypothesizing that the use the two strategic partners make of the DSM contributes to the enhancement of the international rule of law. For that purpose, we analyze two recent cases that were brought before the WTO’s DSM by the EU, namely the Raw Materials and the Rare Earths disputes, in order to assess the actual contribution of EU-China dispute settlement to the enhancement of the rule of law at the international level. The main argument defended in this paper is that the practical use of the DSM by the EU and China reinforces the international rule of law in international trade. Such practice nevertheless also demonstrates that the heritage of China’s Accession Protocol and its overall implementation in the DSM challenge some important aspects of the international rule of law, in particular the clarity and equality before WTO law.

EU-China Discourse on Multipolarity and Multilateralism: Mutual Interaction?

This article looks at the diplomatic rhetoric invoked by the EU and China. Both actors are keenly aware of soft power attractiveness. Both actors are sensitive over the role of public diplomacy - policies and language - in generating soft power profiles. In this domain of public diplomacy language, both actors use the terms 'multipolarity' and 'multilateralism' in their discussion of their relationship in particular, and the international system in general. Yet each side emphasizes one more than another and each side treats the concept differently. This convergence and divergence over relative use of multipolarity and multilateralism indicates the role of strategic language, it indicates some of the limits of norm-based analysis and policies, and perhaps indicates the (soft power) non-traditional security areas where the EU-China strategic partnership can push forward on, as well as indicating (certain hard power) areas that are not particularly meaningful, despite the rhetoric.

Assessing Strategic Partnership Policy

Chapter 1 History of EU-China relations 1 1.1 From the establishment of bilateral relation to the constructive engagement 1 1.2 From the Constructive engagement to the Strategic partnership 5 1.3 Strategic partnership and current framework for cooperation 14 1.4 Three Pillar structure and institutional toolkit for strategic partnership 18 Chapter 2 Three Pillars of Strategic Partnership 22 2.1 I Pillar – Political Dialogue 24 2.1.1 Human Rights 26 2.1.2. Arms embargo 30 2.2 II Pillar – Economic and Sectoral Dialogue 35 2.2.1 EU-China trade 36 2.2.1.1 IPR Protection 38 2.2.1.2 Trade facilitation 42 2.2.1.3 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) 43 2.2.2 Galileo Project 45 2.3 III Pillar – People-to-people dialogue 48 Chapter 3 Assessing the EU-China strategic partnership 56 3.1 Reflexive partnership: Putting the EU on the map 58 3.2 Relational partnerships: Economic first 61 3.3 Structural partnership: enhancing global governance 64 Conclusions: Between the vision and pragmatism

Framing It Right: China–EU Relations and Patterns of Interaction on Climate Change

In the field of Climate Change China has been an increasingly important member of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process and since the mid-2000s, a key target of European engagement policies in the broader framework of the "EU–China strategic partnership". But how do Chinese decision-makers perceive these efforts? The way or "frame" they use to look at climate change also determines their mutual perceptions of each other's efforts on climate change. In order to better understand and evaluate how Chinese climate elites see the EU, the article first details the nascent theoretical debate on diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing and critically assesses the Chinese discourse on climate change. As an empirical, qualitative study, the article draws on interviews carried out in Beijing, Bonn, and Warsaw in 2012 and 2013. The article's main argument is that the Chinese frame toward the issue of climate change has been converging toward the European frame in the 2000s. During these years increasing energy intensity and environmental pollution raised awareness of climate change effects and vulnerability within the population. The Chinese ascent to the status of the second biggest world economy and increasing engagement in multilateral cooperation has a further effect on its framing of climate change. Located in the discourse post-Copenhagen, it attempts to capture the new global dynamics that have been integral to the subsequent rounds of negotiation and epitomized by the Chinese position during the 2011 COP17 Summit in Durban.

The Elusive Axis: Assessing the EU-China Strategic Partnership

This article evaluates whether the Sino–European partnership can be considered strategic. At the discourse level it is found that both sides fail to identify common interests, joint priorities continue to be concentrated in the business sector, and China and Europe have not been able to determine what the relevance of their relationship is compared to other powers. In practice this is even more problematic. The strategic vacuum renders the partnership vulnerable to setbacks and means that China will be even more tempted to capitalize on Europe’s internal divisions while Member States will feel less inclined to close ranks.

Environmental issues as a ‘strategic’ key in EU–China relations

EU–China relations face some troubled areas, notably their differing views on human rights and a widening trade imbalance in China’s favour, compounded by the still weak foreign policy coherence on the part of the EU. This raises problems for the EU–China strategic partnership announced in 2003. This paper argues that, in contrast to such problematic political-trade areas, there is some substantive convergence over environmental and energy issues. Convergence is evoked in the EU–China Partnership on Climate Change announced in 2005, and manifested in various cooperative programmes currently operating. In a practical sense, environmental issues are not only important in themselves but are ones where easier confidence and pragmatic cooperation can be more readily established between the EU and China. However, questions of appropriate environmental technology, the commercial/altruistic basis for technology transfer and outcomes of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009 remain as issues to settle between them.

A Preliminary Perspective of Negotiations of EU–China PCA: A New Bottle Carrying Old Wine or New Wine or Both?

AbstractThe EU–China Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) is a relatively new type of agreement between the EU and a third country, and its negotiation and conclusion will bring about a new landscape for the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two sides. However, owing to the broadness, importance and complexity of EU–China relations, and the unique multiple‐level governance within the EU itself, the negotiation and conclusion of the new PCA deems to be a hard and time‐consuming process. In light of the EU internal aspects, the new PCA seems to be related to several treaty‐making competences and procedures, thus probably with the form of a mixed agreement as the final outcome. In terms of substantive issues, market access, transparency, intellectual property rights, China's full market economy status, abandonment of embargo on arms sales and high‐tech trade, democracy, human rights, rule of law, good governance and dispute settlement clauses, etc are all inevitably the tough and core issues. Nevertheless, it is believed that both sides will strive to lay down a systematic, stable and sustainable treaty law basis for a comprehensive EU–China strategic partnership in the spirit of seeking commonality, mutual respect and trust, and equal consultation.

Future imperfect: The European Union's encounter with China (and the United States)

There has been much talk in recent years about an emerging EU-China axis that challenges the United States in a new strategic triangle. The EU-China strategic partnership, which was declared in 2003, suggests that both sides are gaining global influence as a new kind of superpower that seeks to avoid the bloody conflict that characterized the Cold War. Rather than discuss the contours of this new geopolitical axis, this essay argues that EU-China relations are shifting the meaning of security in an emerging arena of global symbolic politics. It analyzes the symbolic politics of EU-China relations through a close reading of two sets of documents: (1) official policy papers from the European Commission and the PRC's State Council, and (2) European think-tank working papers on China policy. It argues that these documents write the narrative of EU-China relations in ways that limit discussion to a specific narrow range of topics. After outlining Europe's approach to the rise of China, it examines how language politics guides China's engagement with the EU. Then it explores how European think tanks follow the concept of ‘Europeanization’ to frame both how the EU seeks to transform China, and how China policy can help transform the EU. This shows how the rhetorical form of often ambiguous official pronouncements is key in the construction of the content of EU-China relations. The essay concludes that although EU-China relations are getting stronger, predictions of an EU-China axis are over-blown in the sense of being an action to be completed sometime in the indefinite future – ‘future imperfect’. Yet while EU-China relations are unlikely to construct a shared sense of a Eurasian self, the major legacy of recent EU-China ties is likely to be found in the negative identity politics of creating the US as the shared Other. This new global symbolic politics will have a serious impact on the US's concrete relations with China and the EU.