Download EU-China Relations in a Globalised World

EU-China Relations in a Globalised World
Report on proceedings of the workshop co-organised by King’s College London and College
of Europe on October 26th, 2012.
EU-China Bilateral Relations: Challenges and Opportunities
He lived in a fragmented world, where nations collapsed and wars ravaged. Today, the world
is facing global challenges and Sino-European relations are constitutive. Ricci’s experience is
telling because he is a pioneer of the encounters between Europe and China, and changed
the way Europeans and Chinese looked at each other and at the world. Thus, his intellectual
heritage is immense.
According to Ricci “China and Europe differ in manners and in customs just as they differ in
geographical position”. Nevertheless, similarities of cultures are also great. He was aware of
the Chinese pretentions that they were the only civilized culture in the world and challenged
the Eurocentrism. In Ricci’s understanding knowledge is both transmission and exchange. He
presented the first map of the world to the Ming imperial court and was interested in culture
transmission and Confucianism. It is fundamental to understand how the European
knowledge of China is constructed because anachronistic beliefs still persist and there is
unwillingness of the EU to seek a different knowledge of China. Ricci’s public diplomacy
efforts aimed at forging friendship; he recognises the exchanges to be crucial to win
recognition for values. Together with the Jesuits, he pioneered the people-to-people
exchanges and the emperor gave his permission to Ricci to establish a church in China.
Recently, the EU-China relations are experiencing the flourishing of new dialogues,
structures and forums such as the first meeting of the secretariat of the China and Central
and East European countries in September 2012, the first meeting of the dialogue on space
technology cooperation or the innovation cooperation dialogue agreed for 2013 or the EUChina investment agreement in 2012. Other relevant developments have also been the
Partnership on urbanism, the high level meeting on energy (first meeting hold in April 2012),
the Water platform agreed as future cooperation mechanism, or the RIO plus 20 conference.
Looking on political and strategic cooperation in 2013, it is likely that not too much should
be expected since the EU and China do not have similar perspectives. The same thing applies
to HRs. The environmental issue seems more likely to be pushed at bilateral and
international levels, while the ‘People to people dialogue’ is candyfloss and does not seem
have relevant outcomes in the long term.
What are the challenges for the EU diplomacy in the EU-China relations? To what extent the
EU can reconcile a coherent economic diplomacy towards China? The EU-China relationship
is asymmetric in terms of perception and means. There is a development of economic
diplomacy from both sides, consolidated by the treaties: a complex but asymmetric
diplomacy. An important development is that the post Lisbon treaty has for the first time
given the Commission the power for negotiating investment.
1
The economic issues linked to political and security issues pose the limits to the economic
diplomacy. Economic diplomacy means also how to framing it, which tools utilize, in which
way to coordinate and implement it. Hence, it is correct to define the EU as a power in
economic diplomacy? Since 1957, trade diplomacy is a standing area of the European
diplomacy. This poses the question whether it has a big impact and how is the DG trade
adapting to its position as a subaltern of the newly created EEA service. If you look at
quantity the EU is powerful and acts in a quite Westphalian way.
The key dimensions of the EU-China economic relationship are: the institutional factors
(multilevel interactions, huge infrastructure dimension, the EU and member states, public
and private dimensions), the material factors (trade and finance); cognitive factors (ideas,
learning, trust and responsiveness); impact of environmental turbulence (crisis and crisis
management).
The limits of the EU economic diplomacy are to defend the economic interests, promote the
EU as an actor and its legitimacy, contribute to global and regional governance, and provide
a link to political and security interests. Nevertheless, how far can the EU square this circle
and achieve these things in the EU-China economic relations? Also, China has always been
receptive of norms and has always been seen as part of the problem. This is why China has
always had to adapt and change according to the EU willingness.
On climate change, it is impossible to focus only on EU-China bilateral relations, as regional
and international relations pile up. The European Community was the only non-state
signatory of the Earth Summit (1992) and the EU signed the Kyoto protocol (1998). It has
engaged in reducing 20% of greenhouse gases by 2012 while increasing 20 % its
consumption of renewable energies 20%. China attended the first UN conference on Human
Environment (1972) and dedicated a chapter on environmental issues in its State Economic
and Development plan. It created an Environmental Protection Law for trial implementation
and its 1982 Constitution included environmental protection provisions. In 1996, it issued
the first white paper on “Environmental protection in China” and a National Climate Change
Program was further issued in June 2007. In October 2008 China published its first white
paper on climate change “China’s Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change.” and a
new paper in 2011.
The EU and China have established several dialogues with the aim to tackle climate change:
the Energy dialogue, established in 1994; the dialogue on environmental issues, launched in
1996; the EU-China Partnership on Climate Change, which was launched at the 8th EU-China
Summit meeting in September 2005 the EU and China signed a Joint Declaration on Climate
Change; the 6th China-EU Energy Conference in Shanghai in February 2006 served as a
milestone in EU-China cooperation on energy and climate change, and the EU-China Clean
Energy Centre, which was set up in Beijing after the 10th EU-China Summit.
Although the partnership increases cooperation, complementarities and consensus in
environmental negotiations and indirectly helps to readjust China’s position on climate
change, differences remain. China prefers non-binding targets at an international level and
common but differentiated responsibility. At the Conference in Copenhagen, China’s lack of
experience in climate change negotiations raised criticism and that made the Chinese
2
government realise they need to change their approach. Hence, China has become more
involved in the discussions on climate change and its negotiating method has significantly
improved. However, its position has not changed.
In 2008, the EU implemented the Emission Trading System (ETS) system on aviation which
was strongly opposed by China since the EU cannot impose unilaterally a framework. All
companies cooperated but eight Chinese and two Indian companies. China ignored the
deadlines that were established by the EU and has reserved the right of retaliation. Despite
these differences, the EU-China partnership on climate change remains an important
initiative and a mechanism which helps promote bilateral cooperation.
The EU, China and Multilateral Governance: Seeing Eye to Eye?
Before the financial crisis, the free operation of the market was the uncontested principle
across the EU whilst the same principle was contested by China. After the crisis, the EU has
stressed the importance of stability and of the centrality of the ECB to the financial system as
well as the need for more coordination among different monitoring organisations within the
EU. As a result, EU officials became more involved in financial governance and public actors
are closely working with private actors.
In China, the principle of government regulation is coupled with the principle of stability.
Although there is control access to actors to operate in China's market, in the aftermath of
the financial crisis there has been a boom in licence allocation. Before the crisis, the EU
thought China how financial markets work; the US and EU authorities were putting the
framework and China was replicating it. In 1997, due to the Asian financial crisis Chinese
officials became more involved in the negotiating process. A very important change has been
the intervention of Chinese authorities and the increasing willingness to comply with
standards of Basel I and II. The G20 and Basel III showed that China was more involved in the
process and some Chinese ideas were discussed with other countries such as Japan and
taken into consideration in Basel III. Thus, there has been cooperation in support for Basel III
which did not happen before the financial crisis. Furthermore, stability has been emphasised
by both China and the EU. This is not to say that divergences have disappeared (e.g. China
maintains its reluctance in involving private firms in the decision-making process).
On security governance relations between China and Europe now clearly have a geopolitical
dimension that was not present 10 years ago. The security interdependence has risen
dramatically in the last ten years and expressed through geopolitical engagement in Asia,
the Middle East and Africa. This has greatly increased the need to negotiate on security
governance. However the potential for consensus on security governance between Europe
and China is inhibited by their contrasting positions on the two most important norms in
contemporary security: international responsibility for maintaining the peace and the
sovereign limitation on intervention. The relationship between these two norms is not fixed:
even for China there has been evident movement; yet European governments, the EU and
the Chinese government are still some degree apart. The only way to decided how far apart
is by case study. These specific cases of security governance may help understand how
China and Europe configure around normative resolution of disputes. The international
responsibility to protect (R2P) in Africa – the case of Sudan - and international responsibility
3
in counter proliferation – the case of Iran – help evaluate actual or potential normative
convergence in security governance. From an EU point of view, the Sudanese case was a
clear example where R2P applied, while China had a different interpretation based on the
principle of respect of sovereignty. On counter proliferation, Russia and China are sceptical
about having more sanctions; China has been put under pressure to change its position but
oil trade with Iran is considered as normal trade which should not be disrupted. Thus, the EU
and China appear to have reached the point of in their dealing with the Iranian crisis.
Although recently China has moved consistently in using the international arena to defend
its interests, it speaks about multipolarism and not multilateralism as the EU does. It has
taken a much more active role. Nevertheless, its role is not commensurate with its increasing
economic and political responsibilities: China is still not in the business or trying to set up
international norms. In Asia, China has been setting up its parallel set of institutions.
The EU, China and the World: Cooperation or Competition?
The future of global governance will depend on the sharing power between Western
countries and rising powers. China is also a factor in the US Asian policy. Hence, the EU and
China relations may be analysed through the lenses of the transatlantic relations.
The network power capacity of an actor is its capacity to make an idea prominent in the
international system; those who get better understanding about how the network works will
have the capacity to influence it the most. The prism of network diplomacy allows escaping
the dichotomy between cooperation and competition. According to the network analysis,
China is at the centre of the Asian regional network and thus building relationship with
China will be challenging for both the EU and the US as China has systematically uses the
stick and carrots strategy in the region (e.g. China uses its economic diplomacy as in 2011
with Cambodia).
Multipolarity and multilateralism have been used interchangeably but the rising
multipolarity is happening on the ground of big powers. There is a shift in the international
affairs as China is back into the international system and its power projection is increasing.
Within the Chinese foreign policy, the idea of strategic partnership reflects the notion of
harmonious world. China and Russia share the same counter hegemonic view; they have a
join strategic attitude. However, their strategic partnership is undermined by the fear of
Russia of becoming a junior partner in this relationship and by their divergent interests
regarding energy. This explains why Russian authorities have prevented in any way China's
from buying assets in Russia.
In Africa, in spite of trends of growing trade and investment favour China there is a strong
European presence in Africa. The European soft power, the African institutions, their
languages etc. have often their roots in the colonialism period. This still gives the EU a
powerful advantage on China. The year 2003 marked the formalization of the trilateral
relations – EU, China and Africa - driven by commercial and trade interests. The EU wanted
to insure that China could be socialised in the aid framework. After the outburst of the
economic crisis in 2008, there has been an initiative to establish a formal dialogue on peace
and security, infrastructure, food security and agriculture. The documents issued during this
4
period reflected the language of mutual beneficial relation. Functional cooperation between
the EU and China has been happening at different levels, lots of projects happened
bilaterally driven by case by case needs. Triangular cooperation is what is happening and is
going to happen. In the security sector, there is cooperation between the EU and China on
Peace Keeping Operations (PKOs) and anti piracy operations.
Eventually, China has recognised that there is not just one Africa but many African countries
and that the socialisation process will remove the status of China as a developing country.
China is the new comer which is changing the rules of the game. For instance, the
infrastructures were not in the EU Africa cooperation in the 1990s whilst they are now in the
China-Africa agenda. The increasing role of China in Africa is also changing the European
approach to that continent. For instance, the EU is speaking about reducing the amount of
red tape that African countries have to do while dealing with the EU.
Conclusions
The EU - but also the US - should listen more to what China has to say and include it in the
global governance while stopping being didactic and encourage China to converge towards
the norms established by the West. They should start treating China as equal. The EU is not a
unified actor but there are different actors doing things differently. This allows China to play
very well the divide and rule by lobbying European countries, particular Eastern European
countries on HRs in order to put pressure on other EU countries. Thus, while China has a
strategy towards the EU, the EU has none towards China.
Claude Zanardi
November 5th, 2012
5
EU-CHINA RELATIONS IN A GLOBALISED WORLD
October 26th, 2012
King’s College London
10-10.10h. Welcome Address
o Men Jing & Ramon Pacheco Pardo
10.10-11.40h. EU-China Bilateral Relations: Challenges and Opportunities
Chair: Timothy Hildebrandt, King’s College London (Chair)
o Zhang Yongjin, Bristol University
Culture, Knowledge and Diplomacy in the 21st Century Sino-European
Relations – Reflections on the Legacies of Matteo Ricci
o David Scott, Brunel University
Trust, Dialogue and Structures in the EU-China Relationship: Resetting and
Resettling a “Strategic Partnership”
o Michael Smith, Loughborough University
EU-China Economic Relations and the Limits of Economic Diplomacy
o Men Jing, College of Europe
Climate Change and EU-China Partnership: Realist Disguise or Institutionalist
Blessing?
Coffee break, 11.40-12.10h
12.10-13.30h. The EU, China and Multilateral Governance: Seeing Eye to Eye?
Chair: Suzanne Xiao Yang, King’s College London (Chair)
o Ramon Pacheco Pardo, King’s College London
EU-China Relations in Financial Governance: Cooperation, Convergence or
Competition?
o David Kerr & Xu Yanzhuo, Durham University
Europe, China and Security Governance: Is There Evidence of Normative
Convergence?
6
o Rod Wye, Chatham House
China, the EU and International Institutions
13.30-14.30h Lunch
14.30-15-50h. The EU, China and the World: Cooperation or Competition?
Chair: Christoph Meyer, King’s College London
o Patryk Pawlak, European Union Institute for Security Studies
Implications of the EU-China Relations for Network Diplomacy in the Asia
Pacific
o Gonzalo Pozo Martin, King´s College London
What's in a Name? The Contours of the Russia-China Strategic Partnership in
a Multipolar World
o Chris Alden & Laura Barber, London School of Economics
China, Europe and Africa: Competition, Collaboration or Convergence?
15.50-16h. Closing address
o Christoph Meyer
With the generous support of the College of Europe and the Dept. of European &
International Studies and the Lau China Institute at King´s College London.
7