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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 10/05
The Rise of China with Special Reference to Arms Supplies
Bruno Tertrais, Peter Brookes, and Alexei D. Voskressenski
ESF Working Paper No. 19
April 2005
Introduction
Like the rest of the world, Europe has been fascinated by the emergence of China for a long time, and there has been an official relationship between the EU and the People's Republic of China for 30 years now. This relationship was upgraded in 1998. It now takes the form of a China-EU summit every year, the latest having taken place in December 2004. The EU became China's main trading partner in 2004, with trade between the two parties soaring to €160 billion.
The EU's strategy towards China, which is based on European Commission policy papers adopted in 1998, 2001 and 2003, aims at engaging China in the international community, supporting China's transition towards an open society based upon the rule of law and the respect of human rights, and integrating China further in the world economy. The theme of ‘multipolarity’ is also implicitly present in the European approach: "The EU, as a global player on the international stage, shares China's concern for a more balanced international order based on effective multilateralism".
The EU's interest in Asia has been primarily economic and political, and is particularly incarnated in the series of Asia-Europe Meetings that have taken place since the mid-1990s. To be sure, Europeans do have some significant strategic interests in the region. Some EU members are bound by the 1953 agreement to defend South Korea, for instance. The EU has shown a keen interest in the North Korean problem, including being a party to the Korean Energy Development Organisation agreement and keeping contact with Pyongyang while Washington snubbed North Korea in the early days of the Bush administration. The strategic dimension is not completely left out of the Chinese-European relationship—there are regular meetings of experts on non-proliferation as well as conventional arms exports and a joint declaration on non-proliferation and arms control was signed at the latest summit.
Nevertheless, Europe's thinking about strategic issues in Northeast Asia remains very limited. And Asia remains to a large extent the missing dimension of transatlantic dialogue and cooperation. This helps to explain why the political sensitivity of issues such as China's participation in the Galileo system (€200 million) and the ramifications of the question on the arms embargo were not always clearly seen in Europe until recently.
