Commerce greases EU-China
'partnership' By Duncan Freeman
BRUSSELS - The recently concluded visit by
Premier Wen Jiabao to Europe demonstrates the
increasing depth and complexity of China's
relations with the European Union and its member
states. Both sides recognize their undoubted
importance to each other, especially in economic
terms, and the role they play on the world stage.
The view each holds of its relations with
the other is generally positive, but the
relationship is certainly not without
difficulties. Aside from the inevitable
differences over specific issues, the
longer-term challenge will be
for each side to determine exactly what they want
out the relationship, a task that may be more
difficult for the Europeans than it is for the
Chinese. Europeans often have difficultly in
deciding what the "strategic partnership" the EU
says it has with China actually entails, or even
if it is a partnership.
Wen began his
visit by attending both the China-Europe Summit
and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Helsinki.
Despite their grand titles, these annual meetings
do not have the cachet of many of the other
summits on the international calendar. The ASEM,
celebrating its 10th anniversary, is often
criticized for being nothing but a talking shop
that lacks any real focus and has no mechanism for
implementing anything that it agrees on.
This year, participants insisted that the
meeting had improved, and it even managed to
attract an almost full complement of European
leaders, whereas in recent years many had failed
even to turn up, much to the annoyance of Asian
participants. Still, the formal results of the
meeting were limited. One of the main achievements
of the ASEM this year was to issue a declaration
on climate change, which sets out the commitment
of governments in Europe and Asia to cooperate in
tackling the problem.
While China is
certainly significant within the broader picture
of EU-Asia relations, it is also important in its
own right, which is why it has its own summit. For
China, the meetings represented an opportunity to
discuss a broad range of issues with European
counterparts. The EU embargo on arms sales to
China and Market Economy Status (MES) for the
Chinese economy were raised, as they always are,
but without any resolution.
On these
issues, the positions of both sides have been
stated on many occasions, and for the moment there
appears little likelihood of any rapid change. The
EU has said it is working toward lifting the arms
embargo, but gives no specific commitment to a
timetable, knowing that sensitivities within
Europe - and in other countries, most notably the
United States - mean that the issue will continue
to be highly controversial.
On MES, the EU
insists that it is a purely technical issue, and
China does not yet meet the criteria set out by
the European Commission for countries to be
granted the status. Although that is certainly
frustrating for China, Wen did not press the
issues too hard in public. Beijing has clearly
decided that the overall relationship with the EU
is more important than these individual issues, no
matter how symbolically important they may be to
China.
The reality is that there many more
matters for discussion than these bilateral
irritants. One of the chief aims of Chinese
diplomacy is the cultivation of a multipolar
world, as opposed to one in which there is only
one pole, the US. While the EU would not
necessarily see itself in quite the same terms, it
certainly believes that multilateralism is an
important principle.
Whatever the
justification in terms of overarching policy aims,
the EU and China find themselves dealing with
problems in which they have mutual concerns, if
not interests. Hence they have a broad range of
issues on which to discuss and attempt to uncover
common positions. The final communique of the
EU-China Summit set out their mutual concerns on a
broad range of issues, including North Korea,
Iran, United Nations reform, Darfur, terrorism,
and climate change.
The EU presents a
complex challenge for China. On the one hand, the
EU itself, which conducts the European
relationship with China in many areas, is
undoubtedly an important body. But the individual
member states play a crucial role in determining
its policy, and also pursue their own interests,
including on many issues concerning China. China
therefore needs to cultivate its relations at both
the supranational and national levels in Europe.
Pursuing the careful, and generally
successful, diplomacy it has followed in recent
years, China makes sure that it does not just
cultivate the bigger member states. For instance,
in Helsinki, Wen used the occasion for meetings on
the sidelines with the presidents of Latvia and
Slovenia. They may not be world powers, but they
may one day tip the balance in China's favor in a
vote in the EU, and Slovenia is next in line to
assume the presidency of the union in the first
half of 2007.
After the Helsinki meetings,
the rest of Wen's time in Europe was taken up with
visits to the United Kingdom and Germany, two of
China's most important partners in the EU. In both
cases, even if the visits represented no great
breakthrough, they nevertheless continue to
consolidate relations. Both in London and Berlin,
Wen signed a number of large commercial contracts,
which is a normal part of the diplomatic game. He
also signed several cooperation agreements across
a number of areas.
The mood of the visits
was certainly upbeat. Even though Wen had to face
media criticism of China's human-rights record,
there was no real occasion for the issue to
embarrass him. In Helsinki human rights were
discussed with the discretion that has become
normal in official EU contacts with China on the
subject. Indeed, after discussions with Wen in
London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair
preferred to offer a positive assessment of
prospects even in this area.
However,
while official policy may be to play down public
disputes over human rights, the difficulties of
the Chinese government in presenting a convincing
case to rebut critics were emphasized by the fact
that Wen's visit coincided with the publication of
Xinhua's new regulations controlling foreign news
agencies in China (see China's headline news,
September 14), which he was forced to explain and
clarify.
Commerce continues to be the meat
of the EU-China relationship. Although trade and
investment continue to boom, there are many areas
of friction. There have been some signs recently
that the EU, under prompting by European
businesses operating in China, may be willing to
adopt a more aggressive stance on some problem
areas such as intellectual-property protection
than it has in the past.
The EU has
generally adopted a low-key approach to such
issues, avoiding the hectoring public diplomacy
often adopted by the United States. European
businesses continue to face obstacles in China, as
was emphasized by participants in an EU-China
Business Summit also held in Helsinki. The fact
that the EU has chosen to commence action at the
World Trade Organization in conjunction with the
US and Canada on China's tariffs on auto parts may
represent a significant policy departure.
Despite these frictions, at the EU-China
Summit the two sides formally agreed to start
negotiation of a new framework agreement governing
their relationship. The original Agreement on
Trade and Economic Cooperation between the EU and
China was signed in 1985 and now fails to do
justice to the greatly expanded and changed
relationship. EU Trade Commissioner Peter
Mandelson has also recently tried to launch a
debate in Europe on the overall strategy the EU
should adopt in its commercial relationship with
China.
Furthermore, the European
Commission is due to produce its own strategic
document setting out its view of how the
relationship with China should progress. In the
past, European efforts to define what the
"strategic partnership" with China actually is
have failed to provide clear answers. The next few
months may produce some further attempts to
provide an answer.
Duncan
Freeman is a writer and consultant based in
Brussels. He can be contacted at
duncanfreeman@skynet.be.
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