China and EU a Strategic Axis for 21 Century

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DOI: 10.1177/0047117807073766

2007 21: 23International RelationsDavid Scott

China and the EU: A Strategic Axis for the Twenty-First Century?

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CHINA AND THE EU 23

China and the EU: A Strategic Axis for the

Twenty-First Century?

David Scott, Brunel University

Abstract

The EUChina relationship is now emerging as a significant feature of the international

system. The EUs institutional consolidation, development of supranational trade power

and the foreign policy openings of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)

has entwined with the PRCs ongoing sense of geopolitical manoeuvrings between the

superpowers. With its talk of multipolarity, grand strategy has converged, though the

PRCs stress on multipolarity can perhaps be distinguished from the EUs stress on

multilateralism. Nevertheless, human rights issues apart, the EUChina relationship

has matured in the last two decades to involve significant economic matters and visions

of a wider strategic partnership, bringing with it a challenge to American unipolar

unilateralism.

Keywords: China, EU, globalization, multilateralism, multipolarity, strategy, unipolarity

Introduction

In recent years a perhaps rather unexpected, yet significant and generally positive,

strategic relationship has emerged between the European Union (EU) and the

Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Sweeping rhetoric can now be heard: The EU

China Relationship: A Key to the 21st Century Order.1Yet, as late as September 2004,

Shambaugh considered the EUChina convergence as one of the most important yet

least appreciated developments in world affairs in recent years.2

Economics and politics intertwine amidst grand strategy, that underpinningaspect of foreign policy.3Strategic is a nebulous but key term.4It can be understood

as involving deliberate longer-term policy, here with regard to external relations,

which has been judged of importance for the gaining of overall or long-term ...

advantage (OED) to advance the interests and shape the paths for the twenty-first

century. As such, strategic calculations have been clearly involved for both the

EU and the PRC vis--vis themselves and each other. Both sides have, since 2003,

used the phrase strategic partnership to describe where they are going: a more

controversial phrase open to question, a phrase suggesting recognizable convergence,

collaboration and coordination, generally shared perceptions and/or interests.The EUChina relationship does, however, involve two very different types of

international actors, with different political frameworks and value systems. In one

corner, the PRC state, hitherto hyper-sensitive over maintaining its sovereignty in a

world often seen as hostile to its very existence; on the other hand, the EU, an evolving

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24 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 21(1)

international organization which has various supranational and intergovernmental

features. Two actors, structurally very different, faced with a fluid world order. The inter-

action is there, and has become significant, but it is not an interaction of like with

like, structurally and perhaps ideationally. Nevertheless, as already noted, the

term strategic partnership was being used by 2003. This article therefore looks

at two main features, firstly the current nature of the strategic relationship, and

secondly their respective underpinning geopolitical visions and grand strategy.

Involved in all this is the presence and role of language, the semiotics of inter-

national relations.5

(1) The current strategic partnership

The year 2003 was when that earlier talk of political dialogue, the language of the

preceding 2001 and 2002 summits, was replaced by increasing talk of a strategic

relationship and indeed a strategic partnership.

By this time, the limited EUChina trade agreement in 1985 had been overtaken

by wider trends in the 1990s.6On the one hand was greater geopolitical awareness

in the EU of its own potential, with moves towards a Common Foreign and Security

Policy (CFSP) announced in 1992 with the Treaty of Maastricht, and strengthened in

1997 (by the Treaty of Amsterdam). For Javier Solana, the CFSP High Represent-

ative, the point of the CFSP was simple:

my aim, at the head of this adventure, was to promote the Union as a global

political player, capable of mobilising all the resources available economic,

commercial, humanitarian, diplomatic, and of course military to act in a coherent

and above all effective manner over the whole of its international environment. 7

The EU Commission had already started political dialogue with China in 1994,

and had hammered out definitive strategy inA Long Term Policy for ChinaEuropeRelations(1995) and Building a Comprehensive Relationship with China(1998).

On the other hand was a China actively looking for economic transfusion from the

West amidst its dramatic economic surge, but also trying to bring about a more

multipolar balance of power in the international system, which involved a search for

other poles that could help it balance against an emerging American pre-eminence.

Consequently, the Eighth EUChina Summit (30 October 2003) noted the increasing

maturity and growing strategic nature of the partnership.8

The 2003 Summit also recorded that Leaders welcomed the recent issuing of

policy papers on ChinaEU relations by both sides, the dynamic progress of theirrelationship and stressed their resolve to further expand and deepen ChinaEU

relations, guided by the two policy papers, which promote the development of an

overall strategic partnership between China and the EU.9The two policy papers in

question were the EUsA Maturing Partnership: Shared Interests and Challenges

in EUChina Relationsand the PRCs Chinas EU Policy Paper, released during the

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CHINA AND THE EU 25

autumn of 2003, in a delicate minuet in which each sides drafting was carried outin awareness and with explicit reference to the others composition. In a small waythey represent an interesting and unusual example of policy formulation coordination

between international actors. They virtually became joint documents, or certainlyones that were explicitly judged as compatible and convergent. They set the scenefor the strategic partnership.

The EUsA Maturing Partnership(September 2003) dealt with the relationship attwo levels. At one level were immediate issues, the striking growth in bilateral tradeas well as serious differences over human rights.10At another level it emphasizedgrand strategy where:

China is one of the EUs major strategic partners ... Chinas geopolitical vision of

a multipolar world, and the Chinese perception of the EU as a partner of growingimportance, also provide a favourable context ... the EU as a global player on theinternational scene, shares Chinas concerns for a more balanced internationalorder.11

From the Chinese side, their first ever EU White Paper, Chinas EU Policy Paper

(October 2003), also acknowledged differences over human rights, but looked at

wider-ranging geopolitical areas. The EUs fledgling military steps were reflected

in Chinas talk of a military aspect (section V) of their relationship where China

and the EU will maintain high-level military-to-military exchanges, develop andimprove, step by step, a strategic security consultation mechanism.12Basic grand

strategy was also discernible, amidst familiar signposts, where the trend towards

world multipolarity and economic globalization is developing amid twists and

turns ... and is an irreversible trend of history.13Whereas the EU could emphasize

internal (human rights) democracy, China stressed that countries should externally

respect diversity in the world and promote democracy in international relations,

i.e. multipolarity and a veiled rebuttal of American unilateralism and hegemonism in

the wake of 9/11.14China acknowledged that the European Union (EU) is a major

force in the world ... the European integration process is irreversible and the EUwill play an increasingly important role in both regional and international affairs.15

With ChinaEU consultation and co-ordination on major international and regional

hotspot issues ... ChinaEU relations are now better than at any time in history. 16

Strategic convergence was the order of the day in these two documents, encouraging

the EUChina Summit talk of an emerging strategic partnership.Certainly the rhetoric of inside participants and outside observers has flourished.

The 2004 EUChina Summit was greeted with EU talk of their maturing strategicpartnership.17There is no missing the outwardly warm style of EUChina relations.

Chinas Love Affair with Europe (The Far Eastern Economic Review, 12 February2004) was matched by Shambaughs profile (September 2004) of the dramatic de-velopment of EuropeanChinese relations, a euphoric China fever that is grippingEurope, amidst a prolonged honeymoon and booming interaction.18The 2005EUChina Summit had leaders talking of a progressive deepening of the relationship,

which is fast maturing into a comprehensive strategic partnership.19

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Having proclaimed a strategic partnership as something that they were es-

tablishing, what did and does that term actually mean for the participants? Does

common rhetoric mask different assumptions? Is Berkofsky right to see the phrase

strategic relationship as rather empty misleading diplomatic niceties that maska lack of common visions of multilateralism or global governance.20How far does

such (euphemistic?) language mask continuing uncertainty or unease over Chinas

longer-term intentions? Is strategic partnership something to establish (intent) or

something to recognize (already present)? Are the strategic parameters specific

and meaningful enough?

Official definitions of the term strategic partnership have come from both the

EU and China. From the EU side comes Solana, fronting the EU CFSP pillar,

and having piloted through the stronger European Defence Strategy at the 2003 EU

Summit. Two years later, concerning the EUChina relationship, he felt that we really

do have a partnership which is getting wider and deeper. Our goals are converging

across a wide range of international subjects ... we are natural partners in many

ways.21For him why we call this a strategic partnership involved two strands.22

In terms of common challenges one reason to use the term was that:

first, the issues which we discuss and on which we push action forward are global

strategic issues. Issues such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction

and international terrorism. Questions such as global security of energy supply,

regional crises and the environment.23

Furthermore there were capabilities: second we are partners with significant global

strengths, capabilities and responsibilities. China is rapidly emerging as a world leader

and positive actor on the global stage. We in the EU warmly welcome this.24

A slightly more detailed sense was given by the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao

(2005), on the:

shared view of the two sides to work for a comprehensive strategic partnership. Bycomprehensive, it means that the cooperation should be all-dimensional, wide-

ranging and multi-layered. It covers economic, scientific, technological, political

and cultural fields, contains both bilateral and multilateral levels, and is conducted

by both governments and non-governmental groups.25

The multifaceted nature was noticeable. He went on:

by strategic, it means that the cooperation should be long-term and stable,

bearing on the larger picture of ChinaEU relations. It transcends the differencesin ideology and social system and is not subjected to the impacts of individual

events that occur from time to time.26

Primary and secondary levels are thus distinguished. Finally, by partnership,

it means that the cooperation should be equal-footed, mutually beneficial and



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CHINA AND THE EU 27

win-win, the opposite of zero-sum competition.27Subsequently, Jos Barroso thecurrent President of the EU Commission, went on record at the Seventh AnnualSummit that:

both Prime Minister Blair and myself ... fully agree with the definition of strategicrelationship presented by Premier Wen, it means that we put the big picture infront of minor problems [Wens strategic levels?] that might appear preciselybecause the relationship is growing and developing and very fast in a very widenumber of sectors.28

Yet how much actual cooperation and coordination is there on wider issues? Strongstatements are evident from the EU side. As Solana put it (2004), China and the EU

are both global powers, and we want to work alongside China in addressing keyinternational issues.29For the then EU Commission President Romano Prodi, rela-tions between the EU and China were more than just business; it was a relationshipin which the [European] Union and China increasingly exchange views and seek tocoordinate their positions on international issues and global challenges ... we hope tofurther intensify and expand our policy coordination in this respect ... our relationshad never been better.30Wen Jiabaos official trip to EU headquarters at Brusselsattracted comments by Prodi that the EU and China have an ever-growing interestin working together as strategic partners ... in reinforcing their cooperation across

the board.31However, is it true that EUChina reality needs to catch up with political rhet-

oric vis--vis actual cooperation and collaboration?32Does it reflect the verbose ...whiffs of hot air seen in general EU Summit declarations of earlier years? 33 Someexplicit joint positions are apparent. TheSeventh EUChina Summit (2004) sawthe EUChinaJoint Statement on Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, whilst the 2005Summit saw the announcement of the EU-China Partnership on Climate Change.Both China and the EU have supported the Kyoto Protocols on the environment, againin contrast to the USA. In an age of pressing environmental challenges for the twenty-

first century, this may be a particularly significant convergent soft security issue.China is not really involved in European security issues, whilst the EU is of

marginal importance in East Asian security affairs. Traditional diplomatic co-ordination between these two strategic partners has not always been noticeable. Iraq(1991) and Kosovo (1999) saw China and the EU more divided than united on theissues, whilst any EUChina coordination over Iraq in 2003 was negated by the EUsown deep internal splits and paralysis. However, rising tension around Iran has seenChina and the EU converging towards diplomatic conciliatory approaches rather thanthe more interventionist American stance, an issue focused on at the 2004 Summit

which recorded that both sides appreciated their respective efforts in facilitating apolitical resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue.34For Solana (2005), the Iran issuewas one where the EU and China have both expended considerable diplomaticeffort to support what the other is doing. This has strengthened both our hands. Thisis strategic partnership in action.35Iran featured in the EUChina strategic dialogue

meeting in December 2005.



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Human rights remains an issue between the two sides, in the words of the

West European Union Assembly (2005), given the rapid emergence of new world

powers, such as China, with ideas on democracy, individual and collective freedoms

and human rights that are still out of alignment with the norms the western world

supports.36The EU (2005) acknowledged that concern about human rights has

been a major theme of EUChina relations since the Tiananmen Square crackdown

in 1989.37EUChina dialogue on human rights was initiated in January 1996. As

the then head of the General Directorate for External Relations at the European

Commission, Angelos Pangratis, noted: there have been some minor improvements ...

but a challenge the EU does face is not to let the dialogue become an empty shell

or diplomatic fig leaf. We still strive for concrete results.38 However, away from the

headlines of PRC treatment of dissidents and Tibet, the EU has been involved in low-key human rights governance issues at the grass roots level since 1997. Typical was its

Human Rights: Micro-Projects Programme. Armed with a budget of 435,000 euros,

it was offering in spring 2005 to fund non-governmental and academic institutes

in China involved in strengthening local civil society organizations, in particular

organizations focusing on human rights; Raising police and law enforcement offi-

cials awareness of human rights and promoting the rights of detainees; Protecting

the rights of national minorities.39Indeed, the actual and potential effects of such

EU approaches prompted Chinese analysts such as Huo Zhengde to warn that the

ChinaEU relationship conflicts in ideology and values still remain and that suchEU programmes could be an attempt to Westernize and disintegrate China,

needing Chinese counter-measures.40

However, human rights have to some extent been overshadowed, if not sidelined,

by the imperatives of economics. The economic relationship between the EU and

China has become significant, with the EU as the worlds largest market and the

PRC as the worlds most populous and fastest-growing economy. Trade reached

175 billion euros in 2004; by 2005 the EU had become Chinas biggest trading

partner and China was the EUs second biggest trading partner. However, economic

friction has also come along. Soaring exports led to a growing Chinese trade surpluswith the EU over $4 billion in 1997. As the then Trade Commissioner Pascal

Lamy delicately put it in 2002, the Chinese trade numbers are startling ... our trade

deficit ... now stands at a rather substantial 45 billion euros on Eurostat figures in

2001, our largest single bilateral trade deficit.41By the time of the 2003 figures,

our deficit has widened to 55 billion euros, and is growing rather too healthily,

though this is not yet a political concern, at least in comparison with the high level

of concern in the US.42EUROSTAT figures show an ever accelerating pattern for

the EU. The EU trade deficit with China rose to 78.9 billion euros (c. $100 million)

in 2004. The next year saw the deficit continue to grow in Chinas favour, rising to

over 105 billion euros.

The textiles exports/dumping furore, but eventual agreement in summer 2005, was

one side of this competition competition not just for the China market but also

for the Europe market. Here it is significant that Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson



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CHINA AND THE EU 29

made a point of embedding the technicalities of the textiles agreement (June 2005)

into the wider EUChina strategic relationship.43This reflected the official

Memorandum of Understanding rationale for the agreement being in view of

the comprehensive strategic partnership between the European Union (EU) and

the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and the development of their trade and eco-

nomic ties, and with a view to provide the EU and Chinese textile industries with

a stable and predictable trading environment, a revealing sequence going from

the overall wider geopolitical setting to the more specific economic relationship

to the immediate actual trade issue.44A further flare-up erupted in August over its

implementation. Further agreement was reached at the Eighth EUChina Summit

(September 2005), where the Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai brought in

the wider relationship, asserting the reason why China and Europe could swiftlyachieve a rational solution ... should be, to a great extent, attributed to the all-round

strategic partnership already established between the two sides.45Spring 2006 saw

renewed trade disputes over shoes and car spare parts with anti-dumping tariffs

of 16.5 per cent imposed on Chinese shoes in September. One wonders how far

such (primary-level) strategic partnership dynamics transcend and ameliorate such

(secondary-level) friction.

One sign of the all-round nature of their relationship has been the wide-

ranging institutional links between the EU and China. However, evaluation of their

institutional links vary. Some have argued that the very diversity of internal EUstructures means EU relations towards China continue to lack coherence and at

times international credibility, and that there is a present need for injecting some

much-needed dynamism into the relatively compartmented and bureaucratized style

of EU-China relations.46Crossick et al. have mixed feelings on EUChina links. They

feel that more order, consistency, coordination and an effective reporting system

are all needed ... it is clear that the institutional structure and organisation need

a thorough overhaul, but still recognize that a mutually constructive approach

pervades.47On the other hand, by 2002 Algieri already reckoned that EUChina

relations have reached a highly institutionalized and inter woven level of co-operation.48 Shambaugh considered it a comprehensive and multidimensional

relationship, where the breadth and depth are impressive giving a high level of

interaction.49CSIS director Robin Niblett told the USChina Economic and Security

Review Commission that there was a plethora of EUChina links, showing:

the level of comfort that negotiators in China and the EU appear to have in such

a multi-layered agenda. Chinas decentralized and incrementalist system of

government appears to mesh well with the EUs own decentralized and consensual

forms of internal coordination.50

Both actors seem happy enough with their level of contact. The 2003 EUChina

Annual Summit explicitly noted the multi-layered structure of ChinaEU relations.51

For Solana, the intensity of this high level [EUChina] interaction is almost without



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parallel among our other partners.52 Similarly, President of the EU Commission,

Jos Barroso, describes how the current extent of EUChina relations is truly

impressive, with its dense network of contacts ... multiple networks and

exchanges.53Elsewhere it was a question for him of highlighting EUChina links as

our increasingly multi-layered relationship.54From the PRC side, Deputy Foreign

Minister Zhang Yesui also approvingly referred to the multiple levels and frequent

exchanges between EU and Chinese figures.55Until the triple-pillar nature of the EUs

current structure changes, such diversity of links seems inevitable, but not necessarily

at the expense of an effective, indeed deepening and comprehensive, relationship.

The EUs own sui generis identity and organizational structure (neither unitary,

federal nor intergovernmental) makes tight, tidy expectations unrealistic. Never-

theless, this cumulative ever-increasing web of ChinaEU links seems impressiveenough: Pan Zhenqiangs EUChina working network.56As of April 2006, a glance

at the EUChina institutional structure currently shows some 12 existing layers

ranging from the Annual Summit, through five ministerial levels, nine administrative

levels and a swathe of 20 Sectoral agreements and dialogues, i.e. 35 different

regular EUChina bilateral avenues.57The last addition to this strand has been the

setting up by the 2005 Summit of a strategic dialogue mechanism, to be conducted

at vice-ministerial level twice a year. The first meeting took place on 22 December

2005, a further one in June 2006.58

This raises the question of what wider geopolitical visions actually underpinEUChina institutional links. What are the EU and the PRC bringing to any strategic

dialogue? If the longer-term strategic view is to be looked at, then what are their

longer-term hopes and fears concerning each other? Is the relationship based on

shared values, if not with regard to domestic politics then at least with regard to

international politics?

Geopolitical visions and grand strategy

It was no coincidence that at their inaugural strategic dialogue meeting in December

2005 both sides conducted in-depth discussions from a macroscopic and strategic

perspective on their respective role in the international system.59Both actors are

aware of their size (population, territory) and resources, the prerequisites for grand

strategy hopes. Both actors are in an international system hitherto dominated by

others; as Pangratis put it, both the EU and China are, to some extent, still looking

for their rightful place in the world.60

Both the EU and China have recognized themselves and the other as important

rising powers for the twenty-first century and therefore not to be ignored. Thus, forthe then EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, in terms of the future development

of the world economy and indeed international relations ... EUChina relations will ...

be pivotal to the century which has just begun.61From the Chinese side, Wang

Guoqiang felt both China and the EU ought to be the key components of the current



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CHINA AND THE EU 31

and upcoming international strategic structure.62Major General Pan Zhenqiangs

commentary on the 2004 EUChina Summit was that:

as two truly rising strategic forces in the world today, both China and Europemust be increasingly aware of the growing importance of the other side in the

international arena, and the significance of ... mutual support in their policies inorder to better protect their own vital interests.63

Huo Zhengde (2005) sees China and the EU, as two rising forces ... in the inter-

national system ... a new balancing force of the world ... China and the EU will

become a new axis in international affairs.64His use of the word axis is striking.From the EU side, there has been great awareness of Chinas significance for the

international system. The big picture was, for Pangratis:

a formidably dynamic Chinese Dragon, who will inescapably be one of the major

players on the world scene during the 21st century ... the challenge of developinga comprehensive robust and enduring relationship with China, is one of the great

geo-strategic challenges for the 21st century.65

Elsewhere in the EU, Lamy, reflecting IR realism, felt that I am convinced

that the geopolitical shifts in the century ahead will see China playing an

increasingly pivotal global role. So I know that it is worth investing heavily inbuilding a good relationship with China.66Chinas size continued to impress,

Solana arguing in January 2006 for grander horizons, that with new centres of

power, we are moving to a system of continents ... in Washington today and Beijing

tomorrow, alongside which the EU could and should stand.67

Certainly, as the EU has got bigger, most dramatically from 15 to 25 memberstates in 2004, it has become more interested in its role in the international system.

As of 2006, the EUs population of 462 million is well above that of Japan (128),

Russia (144) and the USA (299), though less than Chinas still bigger 1314 billion. In

territory, the EUs 3976 square kilometres is a substantial size stretching across theEuropean continent. Within the EU the implications of this have been recognized; forits Commissioner for Enlargement, Olli Rehn, the European Union of 450 million

people is a strong global player by virtue of that demographic weight.68Brczs

EU as a Geopolitical Animal was indeed How Size Matters.69Such a coupling was

applicable to China in turn. Romano Prodi told the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao,

that their geopolitical context was one where not only was China becoming a moreand more global player but also with the new Enlargement, the EUs influence is

assuming new dimensions at home and abroad.70Consequently, and directly, in this

context, I believe the EU and China have an ever-growing interest in working to-gether as strategic partners ... in reinforcing their cooperation across the board.71In

Jacques Chiracs words, in this multipolar world, only the European Union has the

critical size to establish a dialogue on an equal footing with its major partners suchas China.72The EU Commissioner for External Relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner,



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cited how the Chinese ambassador in Brussels recently described the creation

and success of the European project as one of those events which happen in the

world only every four or five hundred years ... the widening of the Union thanks

to enlargement ... building a secure and economically strong Europe and playing a

leading role in world affairs.73

Alongside its territorial growth, through enlargement, has come the development

of the EUs foreign policy capacity, and with it a nascent security-cum-military

capability. As Jos Barroso told Wen Jiabao:

we now have a Common Foreign and Security Policy, including a Security and

Defence Policy. These developments not only strengthen the role of the European

Union as a global player, but also make it a more important partner for Chinaacross the board.74

The CFSPs High Representative, Javier Solana, points to:

a paradox: of all the prerogatives of states, security and defence policy is probably

the one which least lends itself to a collective European approach; however

after the single currency, it is in this dimension that the Union has made the most

rapid and spectacular progress over the last five years [from 1999 to 2004].75

His enthusiasm remains keen, telling the European Security and Defence College

(ESDC) in 2006 that the story of ESDP is very exciting. This is the [Solanas

underlining] area where the EU has made most progress in recent years.76One sign

of the EUs strategic recognition of Chinas weight alongside its own aspirations had

been in theEuropean Security Strategywith its recommendation to develop strategic

partnerships with ... China.77This report had been drafted by Solana during 2003.

It was significant that the Sixth EUChina Summit (October 2003) officially also

noted the draft European Security Strategy Paper... in which China features as a key

partner for the EUs strategic security relationships.78For Solana, the [EuropeanSecurity] strategy is in a way, the European Unions strategic identity card [as] a

global security player.79In his eyes, it showed ever-widening longer-term strategic

hopes and power claims by the EU: a stronger Europe with a common strategic

vision is also a Europe capable of consolidating relationships with the other great

partners such as China, as a pillar of the organisation of the new world.80The

European Security Strategywas formally adopted at the EU Helsinki Summit in

December 2003.

In the light of such statements, Peels dismissal of any long-term EU vision

that there is no [EU] Grand Plan towards China, at least not in the US sense

of geopolitical strategy, with the EU merely trying to do business and reacting

to events is erroneous.81He underestimates the degree to which strategic hopes

underpin EU initiatives. The EU, for Barroso, looks to play a constructive role in

managing the structural changes in the global order, together with our international



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CHINA AND THE EU 33

partners in which the European Union is undoubtedly a global player ... forging

strategic partnerships with ... China with whom we will substantially deepen our

political and commercial relations.82What is significant is that commercial was

preceded by political, i.e. ultimately strategic. The strategic, i.e. long-term, nature

of EUChina relations has also become regularly recognized from the Chinese side.

As the Foreign Ministry put it, the Chinese government has always been viewing

and developing ChinaEU relations from a strategic perspective and ChinaEU

relations occupy an important position in Chinas foreign policy.83

Here a recurrent theme for Chinese strategists has been to foster a multipolar

balance-of-power situation, to safeguard its position and interests within an

international system dominated in the post-Cold War period by American pre-

eminence. Such power relations underpinned Chinese talk in 1999 of the PRC andthe EU being two of five great powers, amidst the increasing multi-polarization

trend of the present times, which has especially been sponsored by China. 84PRC

figures have been explicit enough. Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan (1999) agreed

that China and the European countries and the EU have become important trading

partners, but pointed out what is more important, politically and internationally, [is

that] China and the EU ... both ... believe that in todays world, there is an accelerated

movement towards multi-polarity.85Jiang Zemin considered the 1998 EUChina

mechanism as facilitating a long-term and stable ChinaEU constructive part-

nership in which world multipolarization is an inevitable trend.86

The PeoplesDailys (2004) profile of EUChina economic links was buttressed by geopolitical

vision, i.e. China has always [?] been positive about European integration, because

it believes a stronger EU will be a significant player on a multipolar world scene.87

Major General Pan Zhenqiang, commenting on the 2004 EUChina Summit, saw:

European integration further moving ahead as one of the positive signs that the

world is moving towards healthy multipolarity ... in Chinas perspective, the

strengthened ties between the two sides will be an integral part of a multipolar

world in the future.88

EU enlargement was no threat to China; instead it could be welcomed in

Beijing, since:

the accession of ten Eastern, Central and Southern Europe states helps promote

the development of the global trend of world multipolarity ... faced with US

pursuit for global hegemony ... EU and China have more common ground to

balance the US power politics and unilateralism.89

Such sentiments point to the third player in the EUChina relationship, the United

States. China has begun to affect the dynamics of the EUUS relationship. The

Seventh EUChina Summit (December 2004) was seen by Weinstein as showing a

significant geostrategic ... tendency of regional power centers to deal directly with



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one another, apart from ... Washington.90A logic remains clear for Huo Zhengde

that the:

accelerating rise of China and the EU and the deepening of their strategic

relationship will facilitate the change of forces in the international system and

help promote multipolarization and democratization of international relations ... in

the past we opposed the Soviet Union hegemony, now we promote multilateralism

to hold back US unilateralism.91

The pattern is clear enough for Watts that Beijing now identifies with Europe

as fellow travellers on the road to containment of American power ... a multi-

polar world with Beijing and Brussels looking to check American power.92The

PRC language over EUChina strategic convergence that both China and the

EU advocate multilateralism, support the UNs core role in handling regional and

international crises and propose to fight against terrorism in a way to eliminate the root

of terror, rather than by force can be read as a Chinese retort to US unilateralism,

and as an attempt by China to co-opt the EU alongside itself.93EU governments may

have been split over US intervention in Iraq, but there was still some apparent unease

over Americas style, Solana welcoming Chinese comments that we saw too much

unilateralism [from the USA] in 2003.94

The EUs approach to China has resulted in some distancing from the USA. FengZhongpings 2004 profile of EU enlargement in the Beijing Review looked for a

realignment of the international system: the enlarged EU will strive for more say in

the international arena with more confidence, which may lead to more disputes and

contradictions with the United States.95As Niblett told the USChina Economic

and Security Review Commission in 2005, there is little doubt that Chinas current

leaders would like to draw Europe and the EU into a multipolar world order in

which the transatlantic alliance would be weakened and in which Chinas ability to

maneuver would be maximized.96

One strategic matter of discord between the US and the EU was reported, withsome satisfaction, in the China Daily:

[with] the EUs rapid progress toward military independence ... the EU is de-

veloping Galileo, its own satellite network, which will break the monopoly of

the US global positioning satellite system. The participation of China in Europes

Galileo project has alarmed the US military ... The US is being sidelined.97

Alongside the Galileo issue stands the whole question of the arms embargo first

placed on China by the EU (and the USA) in the wake of Tiananmen Square. AsEUChina relations have improved, the PRC has been arguing that it is contradictory

for China to be recognized as a strategic partner and yet to be formally embargoed.98

As the Peoples Dailynoted with regard to the issue, mutual trust is the fundamental

problem to be solved for both sides though there is all-round strategic partnership.99



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CHINA AND THE EU 35

For Premier Wen Jiabao (2004) it was a legacy of the Cold War and political dis-

crimination against China; for the China Dailythe embargo was outdated.100 The

EU failure to lift the ban in 2005 attracted Chinese criticism of EU hand-wringing

again on the arms embargo ... EU common diplomacy is still weak ... the EU still

has difficulty distancing itself from the US in international affairs, a tacit admission

that such distancing was desired by China.101Sixteen years on from Tiananmen

Square, EU leaders have been creeping towards lifting the ban, and a revocation

widely expected in 2004/5 is likely to come by 2007/8. However, the issue has

also become a source of disagreement between the EU and the USA: Shambaughs

transatlantic drift, Bernsteins big strategic difference, Gill and Nibletts diverging

paths.102As such, whilst the lifting of the European arms embargo may only serve as

a symbolic gesture, it presages greater geopolitical shifts, a strategic triangulation

on the part of Europe.103

At a global level, there may now be something of a triangle emerging between

the US, the EU and China.104In 2005 Niblett briefed the USChina Economic and

Security Review Commission on the effects of the deepening relationship between

the European Union (EU) and China on the transatlantic alliance, where US policy

makers must take into account a more triangular relationship with China within

which the EU is an increasingly important player at the political and economic

levels.105Shambaugh emphasized the importance of this new strategic triangle:

a shifting geopolitical global order, in which the interaction of the United States,China and the EU will be a defining feature of the international system, given that

these three continental powers increasingly possess the bulk of global economic and

military power as well as normative and political influence.106Thus China not only

affects its own sides of the triangle, EUChina and USChina relations, but it also

affects the dynamics of the remaining side of the triangle, the EUUS relationship.

Triangulation can be conceived between the USA, the EU and China.107

Nevertheless, some strategic ambiguity if not divergence can be discerned between

the EU and China. On the one hand, the EUs Commissioner for External Relations

Benita Ferrero-Waldner argues that whilst Chinas economic dynamism and Europesenlargement and growing identity as a global player were unthinkable back in the

1970s, the modern reality of this friendship between two of the most influential

and fast changing actors on the world stage has meant that the level of joint action

and mutual comprehension has seen a remarkable rise.108Elsewhere she noted of the

EU and China that as strategic partners acting together we are a powerful force ...

as global players, China and the EU are obviously interested in the nature of global

politics in the 21st century.109So far, so good.

However, some distinctions are maintained by her, with her noting that:

some [i.e. PRC figures] have talked of building a multipolar world.For the EU,

however, it is not the number of poles which counts, but rather the basis on which

they operate. Our vision is a world governed by rules created and monitored by

multilateral institutions ... for putting the world in good, multilateral order.110



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As such, we have a more noticeable orientation towards multilateralism ratherthan multipolarity on the part of the EU; towards a (IRs English School) view ofinternational society with shared norms rather than a mechanistic international

system complete with competing power centres; towards IR liberalism-functionalismrather than IR state sovereignty power politics realism. Similar shades can be seenwith the West European Union Assembly: it seems clear that one of the fundamentalaims of the European Security Strategy is to substitute an international order based onthe balance of power by an international order based on a set of rules.111However,the balance of power is precisely what Chinas state-focused sovereignty-emphasizingpolicy has been over the years. Nibletts sense is that EU leaders hope that engagingtheir Chinese counterparts in this web of consultations will help socialize Chinain the international system, and help foster international society.112In such a vein

Ferrero-Waldners discussion with Japanese politicians had her admitting, and ineffect challenging the PRC, that there was still the need to encourage China to be aresponsible member of the international community. We ... want China to embracedemocracy and the rule of law and respect human rights.113

As such there is a strategic transformation agenda in EU circles towards China.On behalf of the European Parliament, Helmut Kohne has been particularly clearabout this: let me first make clear the overarching aim of EU policy toward China ...our general approach aims to help shape China into a fully integrated, responsibleand predictable partner of the international community.114Transformation of

Chinas external behaviour was to go hand in hand with domestic transformation:from the EU perspective, the full integration of China within the world economy isa necessary precondition for giving further impetus to forces within China seekingto pursue further economic and social reform.115Such reform was the precursor forChinas political transformation; that to further pursue our own interest to supportChinas transition to an open society based upon the rule of law and respect forhuman rights, the EU has continually upgraded the political dialogue that itinitially began with China in 1994.116This may not be totally welcome to the PRCleadership.

Meanwhile, Chinas inclination has been towards often stressing multipolarityrather than multilateralism, inclined to stress its rise as a great power in the inter-national system rather than accepting outside norms within an international society,leaning towards IR state sovereignty power politics realismrather than IR liberalism-functionalism. Yet it is this latter strand that EU figures such as Solana have stressed,i.e. Europe is a new form of power. A force for good around the world. A promoterof multilateralism, international law and justice.117Chinas sensitivity over statesovereignty, and remaining legally unfettered by international organizations, couldbe regarded as a rather old form of power.118Admittedly, EU sources were morethan ready to see multilateralism at play in Chinas foreign policy in 2005. Solanastressed how multilateralism and respect for international law are fundamental tenetsof the EUs foreign policy. And I know the same is true for China, whilst Commis-sion President Barroso similarly asserted our shared belief in multilateralism.119However, Chinese sources still preferred to talk of how Sino-EU cooperation interms of politics and diplomacy is of vital importance for both and the cooperativebasis between them is the common awareness of establishing a multi-polar world.120



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CHINA AND THE EU 37

In general one can indeed see some mutual ambivalence at play between the EUsense of multipolarity and Chinas sense of multilateralism.121

This is not an absolute divide. EU sources have at times used multipolar langu-

age rather than multilateralism. Acharya sees the EU acting as an instrument ofnormative multipolarity.122From lofty geopolitical heights, Lamy made the pointin 2003 that unlike in the US there is a much lesser sense of geopolitical challengeto Europe from China ... because we are happy to see ... a greater diffusion of power,a more multi-polar world developing,phrasing very welcomed in PRC circles.123Former French Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, currently holds that only a resolutestrategic partnership between Europe and China can indeed lead to what couldbe called a multipolar world.124Chinese sources, especially more recently, haveused multilateralism rather than multipolarity. Indeed Chinas entry into the WTO

was with help from the EU.125 Nevertheless, the overall balance is that the EUtends to prefer and use the term multilateralism more than multipolarity, whereas thePRC tends to use the term multipolarity more than multilateralism. However, themore recent readiness of the PRC to use and evoke multilateralism could be usedto argue that some degree of international socialization is setting in. IR realismandidealismframeworks can both be used to argue for EUChina convergence.126

Conclusions

EUChina relations have evolved into substantive links, in which economic ties andgrand strategy are discernible, evidently and explicitly in Chinas case and in a morehalting implicit way from the EU. At one level has been their solid ever-growingbilateral economic relationship; at another level cooperation over socio-economicissues, as in the EUChina Partnership on Climate Change announced at the EighthAnnual Summit in September 2005.

Meanwhile, at the larger global level remain hard power issues of security andunipolar American pre-eminence. There are underlying geopolitical undertones forChina and to a degree from the EU, namely reining in the United States and engin-eering their own advancements onto the global stage. In 2002 Moller judged thegradual demise of the Soviet bloc slowly invalidated the basic strategic frameworkfor EUChina relations. Subsequent attempts at building a new framework have thusfar remained unconvincing.127Yet one year later a strategic partnership was beingunfurled between the EU and China. In effect, Mollers bipolar Cold War anti-Sovietlogic has been replaced by a degree of common EUChina strategic concerns overoverweening American power in a post-Cold War hegemonic system. As Baryschsuccinctly puts it, both [the EU and China] are suspicious of the US untrammelledpower.128American unilateralism could be reined in by multilateralism, Americanunipolar concentration of power by a more diffused multipolar distribution. Con-sequently, the Jamestown Foundation noted:

the relationship between China and the EU is being driven inexorably by

geopolitical forces even more than economic ones. Ever since the disintegration

of the Soviet Union left the US as the worlds only superpower, China has been



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casting around for partners to check the excesses of American power ... theChinese, like the Europeans, want to bring about a multipolar world with Chinaand Europe as two of the poles.129

This has in retrospect been an underlying subtext and has reinserted a basic strategicframework.

Such hopes are all to do with relative rise, and also relative decline, to evoke PaulKennedys magisterial The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, where the two actorsidentified as on the rise were the EU and China. For the former, in its potential,the EEC clearly has the size, the wealth and the productive capacity of a GreatPower, but is thereby dependent on how far the integration process carries on, inan ever-deepening Union as the Treaty of Rome first famously laid down.130This

remains a key consideration in the EUs growing international role. As for China,its economic expansion ... if it can be kept up, promises to transform the countrywithin a few decades, for which the Chinese leadership was evolving a grandstrategy to enable great power rise altogether more coherent and forward-lookingthan that which prevails in Moscow, Washington or Tokyo, and where its realizationis only a matter of time.131Seventeen years on, one could well consider that timeas all the closer.132

With a shrunken post-Soviet Russia still in decline, and a Japan constrained bylimits of size, population and resources, the two continental-sized powers of the EU

and China beckon as leading poles for the twenty-first century alongside the UnitedStates. Three caveats must be inserted here.

The first caveat is that Chinas continuing political stability under CommunistParty leadership is not necessarily certain. Chinas very opening up to outsideeconomic forces could bring about regime collapse preceded by internal turmoil, asgraphically argued in Gordon Changs The Coming Collapse of China(2002).

The second caveat is that EU foreign policy cohesion is not always apparent.The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) pillar in the EU is a problematicarea, in part implemented through the looser rotating national presidencies of the

European Council and in part through the Councils High Representative for theCommon Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, appointed in 1999 and re-appointed for another five-year stint in 2004. There is ambiguous overlap with the areacovered by the EU Commission, with its own Commissioner for External Relations(previously Patten and now Ferrero-Waldner).133Henry Kissingers question is stillparticularly relevant in the sensitive domain of foreign affairs: If I want to ring Europeto discuss policy who do I ring? At the least, tighter EU coordination is needed.

The severe divisions exposed within the EU over the Balkans during 19989were undeniable. As Chris Patten, Commissioner for External Relations 20004,

ruefully admitted, the crisis in the Balkans has taught us a bitter lesson ... Europesweakness was exposed as EU dependence on American military intervention wasshown.134For Solana:

the Kosovo crisis has been a wake-up call for European leaders and Europeanpublic opinion. It revealed the shortcomings of European national and collective



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CHINA AND THE EU 39

military capabilities ... It was against this background that the Helsinki European

Council took historic decisions on ESDP.135

There it undertook to provide and maintain60,000 troops for humanitarian andrescue work, crisis management, peacekeeping and even peace making. For Patten,

this is a great step forward ... Europes Common Foreign and Security Policy now

has operational teeth ... Europe a new power pole, with CFSP making Europe a

political heavy weight on the global scene.136For Solana:

the European Union already has considerable instruments of a credible foreign

policy in the diplomatic, economic and trade areas. It now wants to be able to back

these instruments, if and when necessary, with the ability to use force where its

vital interests are at stake and to be able to respond more effectively to crises.137

Admittedly, American intervention in Iraq in 2003 saw the EU split and unable

to take any meaningful EU position. As Patten noted in the British Parliament

(12 March 2003) the CFSP still remained a loose mechanism, with him acutely conscious

of its limitations in which mere inter-governmentalism is a recipe for weakness

and mediocrity: for a European foreign policy of the lowest common denominator,

shown in such a light by the sorry figure cut by the European Union over Iraq. There

again, post-Iraq, some EU consensus seems to have re-emerged over ways forward,

with the European Security Strategy drawn up by Solana and formally adopted at the

EU Summit in December 2003. Since then, in December 2004, under its CFSP remit,

some 7000 EUFOR European forces have replaced the NATO operation in Bosnia.

Currently over ten EU security operations are in progress across three continents,

including the Congo, Aceh and the Sudan. Solana was arguing in 2004 that European

defence policy is not only in constant progression: it has now reached its threshold

of irreversibility.138The setting up of the European Security and Defence College

(ESDC) in July 2005 was a further EU move into integrated military/security matters,

a move noticed in China.139

A third caveat is that the EUs drive for closer post-enlargement integration re-

ceived setbacks in adverse referendum results in France and the Netherlands during

2005, thereby blocking ratification of a new EU Constitution, including its elements

concerning tighter foreign policy cohesion. Nevertheless, the internal imperatives

for tightening up the EUs decision making process, and with it strengthening

foreign policy cohesion, remain. Interestingly enough, Mandelson had already,

whilst preparing to take office as EU Trade Commissioner, ruminated (October

2004) that:

I see the changing power balance in the world, especially the rise of Asia

and particularly China, as one of the most persuasive modern arguments for

Europeans acting together through the EU to enhance our strength and influence ...

our need to engage with China may well be a driver for European integration in

the future.140



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The likelihood is that further European integration will be renewed, again in a grad-

ual rather than sudden big-bang way. In the meantime the slowdown of the EUs

CFSP and Constitutional Treaty have prompted China not to weaken its parallel

bilateral great power relations with leading European states, in particular Franceand Germany, with the call coming in China to beef them up.141

Nevertheless, the trend, structures and strategic designs continue to strengthen

between the EU and China. The EU and China have the potential to shape a transition

from a US hegemonic unipolar distribution of power to a multipolar system. Tony

Blair, acting as the rotating chair of the Presidency of the European Union, could

indeed tell President Hu Jintao at the Eighth Annual Summit (September 2005) that

the strategic partnership between China and the European Union is of immense

importance, not just in terms of trade and the economy, but also in terms of our co-

operation in all the major political issues the world faces.142Politic politeness wasno doubt involved, yet this was more than rhetoric and reflected some geopolitical

reality. It was a fitting enough recognition of a new relationship: Shambaughs

emerging axis between the EU and China.143EUChina links have become more

than just a matter of trade and economics, important though they are. They are now of

strategic political significance for international order in the twenty-first century.144

Notes

1 Alfredo Pastor and David Gossett, The EUChina Relationship: A Key to the 21st Century Order,ARI (Real Instituto Elcano de Estudios Internacionales y Estragicos), 142, 30 November 2005.

2 David Shambaugh, China and Europe: The Emerging Axis, Current History, September 2004,pp. 2438, at p. 248.

3 Paul Kennedy (ed.), Grand Strategies in War and Peace(New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress, 1991).

4 Harry Yarger, Strategic Theory for the 21st Century, The Letort Papers, February 2006. 5 Lydia Liu, The Clash of Empires. The Invention of China in Modern World Making(Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), ch. 1, The Semiotic Turn of International Relations,pp. 530 for nineteenth-century terms in play between the West and China.

6 See David Scott, China and the EU: Strategic Convergence 19572003, forthcoming study. 7 Javier Solana, Preface, in N. Gnesotto (ed.),EU Security and Defence Policy. The First Five Years(19992004)(Paris: Institute for Security Studies, 2004), pp. 510, at p. 6.

8 Joint Press Statement of the 6th EUChina Summit, Beijing, 30 October 2003. 9 Joint Press Statement of the 6th EUChina Summit.10 EU Commission,A Maturing Partnership. Shared Interests and Challenges in EUChina Relations,

10 September 2003, available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/china/com_03_533/com_533_en.pdf, pp. 3, 6 (accessed 1 June 2006).

11 EU Commission,A Maturing Partnership, pp. 3, 23, 6.12 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peoples Republic of China, Chinas EU Policy Paper,

13 October 2003, available at: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjb/zzjg/xos/dqzzywt/t27708.htm(accessed 1 June 2006).

13 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, Chinas EU Policy Paper.14 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, Chinas EU Policy Paper.15 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, Chinas EU Policy Paper.16 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, Chinas EU Policy Paper.17 EU Commission, EUChina Summit: New Steps in a Growing Relationship, 6 December 2004,

available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/china/summit_1204/ip04_1440.htm(accessed 1 June 2006).

18 Shambaugh, China and Europe, p. 245.



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CHINA AND THE EU 41

19 Joint Statement of the 8th EUChina Summit, 5 September 2005, available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/barroso/sp05_478.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).

20 Axel Berkofsky, EUChina Relations Strategic Partnership or Partners of Convenience?,German Foreign Policy in Dialogue, 6.16, June 2005, pp. 1420 at p. 15.

21 Javier Solana, Driving Forwards the EUChina Strategic Partnership, 6 September 2005,available at: http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/discours/86125.pdf, pp. 1, 4(accessed 1 June 2006).

22 Solana, Driving Forwards the EUChina Strategic Partnership.23 Solana, Driving Forwards the EUChina Strategic Partnership.24 Solana, Driving Forwards the EUChina Strategic Partnership.25 Wen Jiabao,Vigorously Promoting Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Between China and the

European Union, ChinaEU Investment and Trade Forum, 12 May 2005, available at: http://www.chinamission.be/eng/zt/t101949.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).

26 Wen Jiabao,Vigorously Promoting Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.27 Wen Jiabao,Vigorously Promoting Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.28 Press Conference with Wen Jiabao and Barroso, 6 September 2005, available at: http://www.

number10.gov.uk/output/Page8133.asp (accessed 1 June 2006).29 Javier Solana, The European Union and China: Strategic Partners, 17 March 2004, available at:

http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/CMS_Data/docs/pressdata/en/discours/79736.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).30 Romano Prodi, Relations Between the EU and China: More than Just Business, 6 May 2004,

available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/prodi/sp04_227.htm (accessed1 June 2006).

31 Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao Pays an Official Visit to the European Institutions, available at:http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/china/intro/ip04_595.htm (accessed 1 June 2006). AlsoProdi Says EUChina Relations at a Historic High Point,Xinhua News Agency, 8 April 2004.

32 Berkofsky, EUChina Relations, p. 14.33 Richard Vaughan, Post-war Integration in Europe(London: Edward Arnold, 1976), p. 169.34 Joint Statement of the 7th EUChina Summit, 8 December 2004, available at: http://europa.

eu.int/comm/external_relations/china/docs/js_081204.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).35 Solana, Driving Forwards the EUChina Strategic Partnership, p. 2.36 West European Union Assembly, Implementation of the European Security Strategy Reply to

the Annual Report of the Council, 13 June 2005, available at: http://www.assemblee-ueo.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/rpt/2005/1896.html (accessed 1 June 2006).

37 EU Commission, The EUs Relations with China, available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/china/intro/index.htm (accessed 10 April 2006).

38 Angelos Pangratis, The EU and China: Economic Giants, in K. Brodsgaard and K. Heurlin (eds),Chinas Place in Global Geopolitics: International, Regional and Domestic Challenges(New York:RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), pp. 708, at p. 75. P. Baker, Human Rights, Europe, and the PeoplesRepublic of China, China Quarterly, 169, March 2002, pp. 4563, negative assessment of EUdialogue to June 2000.

39 Human Rights Micro-Projects Programme: Third Call for Proposal, EUChina News,April 2005, available at: http://www.delchn.cec.eu.int/newsletters/200504/004_en.htm (accessed1 June 2006).

40 Huo Zhengde, On the ChinaEU Strategic Relationship, 7 April 2005, Chinese Institute forInternational Studies (CIIS), available at: http://www.ciis.org.cn/item/5005-04-07/50919.htm(accessed 1 June 2006).

41 Pascal Lamy, EUChina Trade Relations, Beijing, 17 October 2002, available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/archives/commission_1999_2004/lamy/speeches_articles/spla128_en.htm (accessed1 June 2006).

42 Lamy, The EU, China and Trade: Challenges and Opportunities Ahead, Shanghai, 15 March2004, available at: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2004/june/tradoc_116276.pdf (accessed

1 June 2006).43 Peter Mandelson, Statement by Peter Mandelson to the INTA Committee on the Textile Agreementwith China, 14 June 2005, available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/commission_barroso/mandelson/speeches_en.cfm?temp=sppm037_en.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).

44 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) Between the European Commission and the Ministry ofCommerce of the Peoples Republic of China on the Export of Certain Chinese Textile and Clothing

Products to the European Union,12 June 2005, available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/issues/sectoral/industry/textile/mou_tex_china_en.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).



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45 Sino-EU Strategic Partnership not an Empty Talk, Peoples Daily, 7 September 2005. Also FengZhongping, ChinaEU Relations Growing Mature, Peoples Daily, 6 September 2005. Cf. WilliamHawkins, Chinese Textiles Herald Future Tensions with US, China Brief, 5(20), 2005, pp. 13.

46 Berkofsky, EUChina Relations, p. 14; The Foreign Policy Centre (Greg Austin), EUChinaStrategic Partnership Must Be Made Reality, press release, 17 May 2005, available at:http://fpc.org.uk/fsblob/465.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).

47 Stanley Crossick, Fraser Cameron and Axel Berkofsky, EUChina Relations Towards a StrategicPartnership, Working Papers, European Policy Centre, 19 July 2005, p. 25, available at: http://www.theepc.be/TEWN/pdf/251966322_EPC%20JULY.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).

48 Franco Algieri, EU Economic Relations with China: An Institutional Perspective, China Quarterly,169, March 2002, pp. 6477, at p. 76.

49 Shambaugh, China and Europe, p. 243.50 Robin Niblett, China, the EU, and the Transatlantic Alliance, 22 July 2005, available at: http://

www.uscc.gov/hearings/2005hearings/written_testimonies/05_07_21wrts/niblett_robin_wrts.pdf,pp. 34 (accessed 1 June 2006).

51

Joint Press Statement of the 6th EUChina Summit.52 Solana, The European Union and China: Strategic Partners.53 Jos Barroso, 4 May 2005, available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/barroso/

sp05_040505.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).54 Barroso, The EU and China: Painting a Brighter Future Together, 15 July 2005, available at:

http://europa.eu.int (accessed 1 June 2006).55 Zhang Yesui, Forging Ahead into the Future and Furthering the Development of ChinaEU All-

Round Strategic Partnership, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peoples Republic of China, 1 May2005, available at: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/t194651.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).

56 Pan Zhenqiang, The 7th Sino-EU Summit Meeting and the Sino-European Relations in the Future,Outline Info-Service(Konrad Adenauer Foundation), 7, 2004, available at: http://www.kas.de/proj/home/pub/37/2/year-2004/dokument_id-5840/index.html (accessed 1 June 2006).

57 EU Commission, Current Architecture of EUChina Relations Political Dialogue, available at:http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/china/docs/architecture.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).

58 Discussed in David Scott, The EUChina Strategic Dialogue: Pathways in the InternationalSystem, in David Kerr and Fei Liu (eds), The International Politics of EUChina Relations(Oxford:Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

59 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peoples Republic of China, China and the EU Hold the FirstRound of Strategic Dialogue, 22 December 2005, available at: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/t227891.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).

60 Pangratis, The EU and China, p. 71.61 Lamy, EUChina Relations: Continuity and Change, 31 October 2003, available at: http://europa.

eu.int/comm/archives/commission_1999_2004/lamy/speeches_articles/spla197_en.htm (accessed1 June 2006).

62 Wang Guoqiang, Both China and the European Union Shall Play a More Important Role in theNew Century,Dialogue and Cooperation, 1, 2002, pp. 537, at p. 53.

63 Pan Zhenqiang, The 7th Sino-EU Summit Meeting.64 Huo Zhengde, On the ChinaEU Strategic Relationship.65 Huo Zhengde, On the ChinaEU Strategic Relationship, pp. 77, 78.66 Lamy, Second EUChina Business Dialogue, 23 October 2000, available at: http://www.delchn.

cec.eu.int/en/eu_china_wto/wto3.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).67 Solana, speech at The Sound of Europe conference, 27 January 2006, available at: http://ue.eu.

int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/discours/88179.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).68 Olli Renh, The EU Accession Process, an Effective Tool of the European Foreign and Security

Policy, 21 February 2006, available at: http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.

do?reference=SPEECH/06/112&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en(accessed 1 June 2006).69 Jozsef Brcz, How Size Matters: The EU as a Geopolitical Animal, conference paper, The

European Union and the World, 56 May 2005, available at: http://web.uvic.ca/europe/ipsa-rc3/jborocz.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).

70 Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao Pays an Official Visit to the European Institutions, availableat: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/china/intro/ip04_595.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).Also Prodi Says EUChina Relations at a Historic High Point.



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71 Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao Pays an Official Visit. Also Prodi Says EUChina Relationsat a Historic High Point.

72 Jacques Chirac, Speech by M. Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic, at the Opening of theThirteenth Ambassadors Conference, 29 August 2005, available at: http://www.diplomatie.gouv.

fr/actu/bulletin.gb.asp?liste=20050831.gb.html&submit.x=10&submit.y=5&submit=consulter(accessed 1 June 2006).

73 Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Managing Globalisation: The Case for a European ForeignPolicy, 10 February 2006, available at: http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/06/75&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en(accessed 1 June 2006).

74 Barroso, 4 May 2005, available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/barroso/sp05_040505.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).

75 Solana, Preface, p. 5.76 Solana, Speech by EU HR Javier Solana at the Graduation Ceremony ESDC High Level Training

Course in Stockholm, 17 March 2006, available at: http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/EN/discours/88870.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).

77 Solana/European Council,A Secure Europe in a Better World. European Security Strategy, 12December 2003, available at: http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cmsUpload/78367.pdf, p. 13 (accessed1 June 2006).

78 Joint Press Statement of the 6th EUChina Summit.79 Solana, Preface, p. 6.80 Solana, The EU Security Strategy Implications for Europes Role in a Changing World, 12

November 2003, available at: http://iep-berlin/mittagsgespraeche/mig-2003/mig-03-Solana-enspeech.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).

81 Quentin Peel, Where Trade Trumps Politics, Financial Times, 2 February 2005.82 Barroso, The EU and China.83 Wen Jiabao Holds Talks with the President of the European Commission, Ministry of Foreign

Affairs of the Peoples Republic of China, 6 May 2004, available at: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/

topics/pwjbve/t97483.htm (accessed 1 June 2006). Also Wen Stresses Importance of DevelopingEUChina Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, Peoples Daily, 7 May 2004.

84 Yang Xiyue, Power Relations in Todays World,Beijing Review, 17 March 1999, pp. 67, at p. 6.85 Tang on International Situation and Chinas Diplomatic Work,Beijing Review, 2228 March 1999,

pp. 611, at p. 10.86 Jiang Zemin, Develop ChinaEurope Cooperation and Promote the Establishment of a

New International Order,Beijing Review, 1218 April 1999, pp. 68, at p. 7.87 Wang Wei, EUChina Trade to Benefit Both, Peoples Daily, 9 October 2004.88 Pan Zhenqiang, The 7th Sino-EU Summit Meeting. This echoes Wang Guoqiangs 2002 analysis:

deepening cooperation between China and the EU can further promote the development of themultipolar process ... China will align with Europe, in Both China and the European Union ShallPlay a More Important Role in the New Century, pp. 57, 54.

89 Mei Zhaorong, EUs Historic Enlargement and its Implications, Chinese Institute of InternationalStudies, 27 September 2004, available at: http://www.ciis.org.cn/item/2004-09-27/50596.html(accessed 1 June 2006).

90 Michael Weinstein, Testing the Currents of Multipolarity,Power and Interest News Report,15 December 2004.

91 Huo Zhengde, On the ChinaEU Strategic Relationship.92 David Watts, EUChina Policy Needs to Cut it Free from its American Apron Strings,Asian Affairs,

June 2005, available at: http://asianaffairs.com/june2005/europe.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).93 Feng Zhongping, Forming a Closer Bond,Beijing Review, 27 May 2004, pp. 1823, at p. 23.94 Solana, The European Union and China: Strategic Partners.95 Feng Zhongping, Forming a Closer Bond,Beijing Review, 27 May 2004, pp. 1823, at p. 23.96 Niblett, China, the EU, and the Transatlantic Alliance, p. 1.

97 Michael Lind, The New US Century is Over, China Daily, 7 February 2005.98 Frank Ching, Changing Dynamics in EUChina Arms Embargo, China Brief, 4(5), 2004,

pp. 45; Richard Bitzinger, A Prisoners Dilemma: The EUs China Arms Embargo, China Brief,4(13), 2004, pp. 13; Zan Jifang, Europe Ponders Arming China,Beijing Review, 23 December2004, pp. 1011; David Shambaugh, Dont Lift the Arms Embargo,International Herald Tribune,23 February 2005; Jing Men, Challenge to the EUChina Strategic Partnership An Analysis of theIssue of Arms Embargo, conference paper, The European Union and the World, 56 May 2005,available at: http://web.uvic.ca/europe/ipsa-rc3/jmen.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).



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99 Look at EUs Lift of Arms Embargo Calmly, Peoples Daily, 23 December 2004.100 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peoples Republic of China, Wen Jiabao: Arm Sales Embargo

Against China Is a Legacy of the Cold War, 8 December 2004, available at: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/t173843.htm (accessed 1 June 2006); Qin Jize, EU Urged to Lift OutdatedArms Embargo, China Daily, 22 March 2005.

101 Zhang Niansheng, What Difficulties Does the EU Face in Lifting Arms Embargo Against China?,Global Times, 25 March 2005.

102 Shambaugh, The New Strategic Triangle: US and European Reactions to Chinas Rise,Washington Quarterly, 28(3), 2005, pp. 725, at p. 7; Richard Bernstein, EU vs US vs China:Partnership Paradoxes,International Herald Tribune, 21 January 2005; Bates Gill and RobinNiblett, Diverging Paths Hurt US and Europe, International Herald Tribune, 6 September2005.

103 Anoop Rathod, Strategic Triangulation,Dartmouth Independent, 7 March 2005. Also David Gossett,In Search of Equilibrium, Academia Sinica, available at: http://www.academiasinicaeuropaea.net/Documents/equilibrium.htm (accessed 1 June 2006).

104

Pangratis, The EUUSChina Triangle, speech at Boston University, 4 April 2006.105 Niblett, China, the EU, and the Transatlantic Alliance, p. 1.106 Shambaugh, The New Strategic Triangle, p. 7.107 Laurent Fabius, The European Union and the Opening Up of China, 12 December 2005, available

at: http://www.academiasinicaeuropaea.net/Documents/EuroChinaForum/IVForum.Fabius.htm(accessed 1 June 2006).

108 Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EUChina Partnership at an Exciting Stage, Peoples Daily,11 May 2005.

109 Ferrero-Waldner, EUChina Partnership at an Exciting Stage.110 Ferrero-Waldner, The EU, China and the Quest for a Multilateral World, 4 July 2005, available

at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/ferrero/2005/sp05_414.htm (accessed 1 June2006).

111 West European Union Assembly, Implementation of the European Security Strategy.112 Niblett, China, the EU, and the Transatlantic Alliance.113 Ferrero-Waldner, New Visions for EUJapan Relations, 6 April 2006, available at: http://europa.

eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/06/227&format= HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en (accessed 1 June 2006).

114 Helmut Kunhe, Speech on Behalf of the European Parliament on the Occasion of the 60th EP/USCongress Inter-Parliamentary Meeting in London, 2 December 2005, available at: http://www.helmut-kuhne.de/bruessel/London%20Speech-2%2012%202005.doc (accessed 1 June 2006).

115 Kunhe, Speech on Behalf of the European Parliament.116 Kunhe, Speech on Behalf of the European Parliament.117 Solana, speech at The Sound of Europe conference.

118

R. Mitter,A Bitter Revolution: Chinas Struggle with the Modern World(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2005).119 Solana, Driving Forwards the EUChina Strategic Partnership, p. 2; Barroso, 4 May 2005,

available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/barroso/sp05_040505.htm(accessed 1 June 2006).

120 Ni Yanshuo, EU Visit Sets Tone,Beijing Review, 28 July 2005, pp. 1011, at p. 10.121 Niblett, China, the EU, and the Transatlantic Alliance.122 Amitav Acharya, Regional Security Arrangements in a Multipolar World? The European Union

in Global Perspective, FES Briefing Paper, December 2004, p. 7.123 Lamy, EUChina Relations: Continuity and Change.124 Fabius, The European Union and the Opening up of China.125 Michaela Eglin, Chinas Entry into the WTO with a Little Help from the EU,International Affairs,

3, July 1997, pp. 489508.126 Ting Wai, EUChina Relations: Economic, Political and Social Aspects, conference paper at The

3rd Conference of European Union Studies Association Asia Pacific (EUSA-AP), 9 December2005, p. 6, available at: http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/eusa-japan/download/eusa_ap/paper_TingWai.pdf(accessed 1 June 2006).

127 Kay Moller, Diplomatic Relations and Mutual Strategic Perceptions, China Quarterly, 169, 2002,pp. 1032, at p. 10.



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128 Katinka Barysch, The EU and China, CERBulletin, 39, December 2004/January 2005, availableat: http://www.cer.org.uk/articles/39_barysch.html (accessed 1 June 2006). See also KatinkaBarysch, Charles Grant and Mark Leonard,Embracing the Dragon: The EUs Partnership WithChina(London: Centre for European Reform, 2005).

129 Ching, Changing Dynamics in EUChina Arms Relations, p. 5.130 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers(London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 472.131 Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, pp. 447, 458.132 See Michael Swaine and Ashley Tellis,Interpreting Chinas Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and

Future(Santa Monica: RAND, 2000).133 See Charles Grant and Mark Leonard, How to Build a Better EU Foreign Policy, CER Bulletin,

April/May 2006, available at: http://www.cer.org.uk/articles/47_grant_leonard.html (accessed1 June 2006).

134 Chris Patten, The Role of the European Union on the World Stage, 25 January 2001,available at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/patten/speech01_23.htm (accessed1 June 2006).

135 Solana, Address by Dr Javier Solana to the Bundesakademie fr Sicherheitspolitik,11 May 2000, available at: http://ue.eu.int/cms3_applications/applications/solana/details.asp?cmsid=335&BID=107&DocID=61441&insite=1 (accessed 1 June 2006).

136 Patten, The Role of the European Union.137 Solana, Address.138 Solana, Preface, p. 6.139 EU Sets up Training Body for Security, Defense, Peoples Daily, 19 July 2005.140 Mandelson, Chinas Future, and its Impact on Us, available at: http://europa.eu.int/

comm/commission_barroso/mandelson/speeches_articles/temp_mandels_speeches_en.cfm?temp=sppm002_en (accessed 1 June 2006).

141 E.g. China, France to Beef Up Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, Peoples Daily, 21 April2005; China, France to Enhance Strategic Partnership, China Daily, 10 May 2005; Premiers Visitto France Reinforces Global Strategic Partnership,Xinhua News Agency, 7 December 2005.

142 Blair: EUChina Ties Immensely Important, China Daily, 6 September 2005.143 Shambaugh, China and Europe: The Emerging Axis.144 See Kerr and Fei Liu, The International Politics of EUChina Relations, for ongoing discussions

on strategic identities and other strategic and political aspects of their relationship.