Today, the Chinese - European dialogue has its own institutional structure in a lot of areas. At the eight’s EU-China summit held in Beijing on September 5, 2005, several treaties, memoranda and protocols were signed covering work, employment and social issues, utilization of space, energy, transport, biodiversity, science, technological development and a joint declaration on climate change.
There is also a growing convergence between the Chinese and the European geopolitical view, which shows their joint search for multilateralism instead of unilateralism. Despite a broad range of common interests and actions the mutual perception of the other in some areas remains unclear and ambiguous.
China's interest in developing countries, which has become one main pillar of Chinese Foreign Policy is such an area. Chinese development aid and investments are increasing continuously. Almost fifty percent of Chinese expenditure for development cooperation goes to Africa.
China’s motives for this extensive engagement in Africa are interpreted in various ways by Western governments, international think tanks and civil society organisations. While some perceive this engagement to be an Aid for Oil Strategy to keep the Chinese economy growing, others interpret China’s cooperative approach to be purely trade-related, pursuing a rather traditional aid strategy: offering poor countries comprehensive trade deals in combination with aid.
Those critical voices easily forget that the EU with it’s rather protectionist agricultural policy as well as increasing Non Trade Barriers hinders development countries to access European markets. China’s economic engagement in developing countries with direct investment and a focus on economic partnership brings about visible improvement in the living conditions of the people concerned.
Others again perceive China’s strategic and political interests to find influential allies in the United Nations - for example Sudan, Zimbabwe and Nigeria – as well as the prevention of Taiwan’s independence and diverting attention from its own human rights record to be the predominant motives.
Differing the Chinese approach, the European Union closely links its development policy objectives to issues such as good governance, accountability, transparency, and respect for human rights.
Whether these two approaches would allow for a strategic partnership towards developing countries was the topic of a Workshop organised by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) and the European Institute for Asian Studies (EIAS)in July 2007 in Brussels.
The outcomes of the workshop are now accessible as a PDF Document on our Webpage. (www.eukas.eu)