Magazine / Current / China / Article | 06/08/2008

Friendly rhetoric

The EU can not find a common denominator to pursue in its relations with China. Consequently, EU-China policies are increasingly dominated by a China that knows what it wants. A European perspective.

Political rhetoric rarely matches political reality. The one on the state of EU-China relations is not an exception and after years of referring to each other as 'strategic partners' Brussels and Beijing have fairly little to show for, except an increasingly long list of bilateral problems with the trade deficit in China's favor.

Photo: AP

While bilateral trade amounted to Euro 300 billion in 2007, the EU's trade deficit with China has reached Euro 160 billion in the same year. This, as the Commission warns on a regular basis, translates into a deficit that is growing by Euro 15 million per hour. Add what Brussels refers to as Beijing's refusal to enforce its intellectual property rights, 'excessive state subsidies' and market access obstacles limiting EU investments in China, and the state of current bilateral relations looks decisively less bright as the official friendly rhetoric coming out of the Commission would suggest.

Misguided politics

To be sure, the Commission's mandate and authority to implement China policies on behalf of the Union's 27 Member States are fairly limited and in many policy areas depend on the Member States' ability to unanimously accept the Commission's policies and policy recommendations. More often than not in recent years this has led to toothless EU China policies at best and misguided ones at worst (imposing temporary tariffs on Chinese-made shoes and light-bulbs a few years ago is a prime example for the latter type of policies) and the EU is admittedly as far away as ever from speaking with 'one voice' to China (and the rest of the world for that matter). In the meantime, the EU will continue to struggle explaining to its critics how a 'strategic partnership' between a block of democratic nations and a non-democratic authoritarian country with fundamentally different foreign and security policy priorities is feasible in the first place.

More European China studies

Speaking of priorities. The Commission has many times in recent years announced its intentions to invest money and resources into contemporary China studies in Europe helping European academia to catch up with their colleagues in the rest of the world, especially in the US. That sounded promising on paper, but as it turns out Brussels has yet to put the money where its mouth is and provide European universities and think tanks with funds to produce work and research on contemporary China relevant to academia and policymakers. Instead, the Commission hands out an occasional research grant to consortia in Europe and China to work on a narrowly defined China-related topic for a limited period of time, which is admittedly the very opposite of supporting Chinese studies in Europe on an effective and sustainable basis.

Same old policies

Back in the 'real' world, the so-called 'EU-China Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA)' will be the next 'big bang' on the bilateral agenda as far as Brussels is concerned. Most EU and EU-China observers, however agree that the PCA is very likely to be an update of the 1985 EU-China cooperation agreement adding very little of substance to existing institutional ties.
Apart from announcements that the PCA will take EU-China relations to the 'next level', there is next to no information available on how exactly bilateral relations will change in quality with a new PCA in place.

Human rights concerns

While the EU is eager to sign the agreement sooner rather than later, Beijing seems less in a rush to put its signature under the PCA, probably not least because of Brussels' (by EU standards, surprisingly) outspoken and long overdue criticism of China's approach to and protection (or lack thereof) of human rights in general and Tibet in particular – on June 12 2008 the EU Commission posted a strongly worded statement on China's Tibet policies on its website after having received a number of petitions from non-governmental organizations, exile Tibetans and others urging the EU take a position on the recent unrests in Tibet.

Defining priorities

Either way, with or without the PCA, at least Beijing knows what it wants from its strategic partners in Brussels: Technology transfers, technical assistance and development aid to keep China's economy growing at double digit growth rates in the years ahead. Unlike the EU, China has at least its priorities in place.

Axel Berkofsky

A native German, Axel Berkofsky was born in 1969 and is a regular commentator on EU-Asia relations for European, US and Asian media. Currently, he ...
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