The European Union and China: An uneasy strategic partnership

In June 2015 the EU and China celebrated the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two at their 17th summit in Brussels. The two are among one another’s leading trade partners and have a heavily institutionalized diplomatic relationship, involving meetings and dialogues at all levels and covering many policy areas. The EU and China jointly describe their relationship as a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’. 1 This chapter reviews this relationship, exploring its evolution and seeking to critique the public rhetoric of ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ to understand the dynamics behind the relationship. This chapter argues that the EU-China relationship should be understood as an uneasy strategic partnership. The extensive economic relationship between them is one of very substantial mutual benefit, the level of institutionalization is impressive and geography means that neither views the other as a threat. Nevertheless, there are fundamental systemic differences between the EU as a collective of liberal democracies and China as an authoritarian one-party communist state, which not only produce disputes over human rights but arguably also constrain more general cooperation between the two. EU and Chinese approaches to global issues also differ in important ways, with the EU pursuing what can be described as a post-sovereigntist approach and China supporting a more traditional sovereignty-based policy. The EU-China economic relationship is also problematic because it has produced a major European trade deficit with China, which is an on-going concern for EU policy makers (both at the EU level and in many member states). For these reasons, the EU-China relationship is - and is likely to remain - at best an uneasy strategic partnership, with all that entails for a putative multipolar order.