The Adjustment Of EU's Strategy Towards China And The Development Of Sino-European Economic And Trade Relationship

Trade and Economic Cooperation between the European Union and China compose the basis of Sino-European bilateral relationship. EU-China trade has developed greatly since they established diplomatic relations in 1975.Their cooperative fields keep expanding. Particularly in recent years, Sino-European trade has developed remarkably. The EU has become China's 1st trading partner, the 1st technology source and the 4th investors in China since it expanded in 2004. While, China is the EU's 2nd trading partner just following the USA. With the development of China's economy and its international position's advance, the economics and trade between EU and China has become more and more important to each other so that EU continuously adjusted its strategy to China in the past years. EU has released 6 policy documents to China since the Agreement on Trade and Economic Cooperation between the European Economic Community and the People's Republic of China-1985 subscribed. Chinese government recognized that EU attached importance to developing relationship with China. Chinese government formulated CHINA'S EU POLICY PAPER which aimed at declaring publicly China's policy towards EU for the first time in Oct, 2003. With the development of China-EU's relationship, EU recognized the former policies could not fit the new situation. In Oct 24th of 2006, EU released new trade policy paper towards China"competition and partnership: A policy for EU-China trade and investment"as part of the broader partnership with China and the approach set out by the Commission in its Communication on relations with China: "Closer Partners, Growing Responsibilities"which addresses the EU's newest strategy towards China. On the analysis of the above documents, this paper summarizes the actualities and historical achievements in the Sino—European cooperation generally,dissertates the background and content of the new released documents and gives some estimation. In this paper, it also analyses the existing problems and development trend of the Sino—European cooperation on economy and trade. At last it proposes some countermeasures.