| Volume 6, Number 3, July 2009 |
China–European Union
A Partnership That Is Not Strategic
by Charles Grant & Katinka Barysch
格兰特、巴瑞斯 |
The West Has Ceased To Impress
China A Long Time Ago
From an Interview with Frank Sieren
by Marcus Engler
by Frank Sieren 弗兰克·西仁 |
THE current partnership between the European Union (EU) and China cannot be described as strategic. They have a dense political relationship, including dialogues on subjects that range from human rights to science, migration and monetary policy. A “trade and economic cooperation agreement” of 1985 sets the framework for the relationship. A new “partnership and cooperation agreement”, on which talks began in 2007, is due to replace it. Since 1998 there have been annual China EU summits, and since 2005, annual “strategic dialogues” at vice foreign minister level. And in April 2008, in Beijing, the European Commission and the Chinese government unveiled a new “high level mechanism” to discuss economic and trade issues.
But all these meetings do not add up to the “comprehensive strategic partnership” that the two sides committed themselves to in 2003. In May 2004, Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao explained (during a lecture in Brussels)...
[ Read more ] |
Q: When people in the West talk about China, there’s always either great euphoria or total aversion. Why such extremes?
A: Because there’s an epochal change taking place. Ever since the discovery of America by Columbus the West has dominated. Wherever the conquerors went, they were able to force the people to play by their rules. Now, that’s no longer tenable. Nations like China are going their own and very successful way. Many in the West are fascinated by that dynamics, by the modernity, by how fast those people are able to leave poverty behind them.
Q: And how is the aversion to explain?
A: At about the end of the nineties the fear came along—the worry of having to share, the worry that our financial margins would decrease; that resources would become more and more expensive, and our values would loose importance; that more and more jobs would drift to China or Asia...
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| Issue 6.3 |
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Remembering—
A Shared Duty
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