The EU and China in the Global System - Partners or Competitors ?
Keynote Remarks
A lot has been said and written on EU-China co-operation on the international stage in recent years. Ever since the EU and China referred to each other as ‘strategic partners’ in 2003 Brussels and Beijing have undertaken numerous efforts to elaborate define how and where Europe and China will co-operate in international politics, security and economics.
Over the last four years, the EU and China each published several policy papers outlining their respective political, trade, economic and security policies towards each other and the expansion of relations in essentially all thinkable areas and sectors has been accompanied by a seemingly ever growing exchange of official track I as well as non-official track II exchanges. The frequency and intensity of bilateral exchanges on numerous levels is indeed impressive and demonstrated that both Brussels and Beijing follow up on their announcements to invest the political and diplomatic resources and energies to constantly upgrade institutional and exchanges and relations beyond increasing bilateral trade and investment relations taken care of by business.
