strategic regional cooperation, in the UN Security Council, the Strategic Partnership
is only a direction and a target.
The World Trade Organization is the key venue for China and the EU to handle
bilateral relations. It is noted in this report that in the early days after her entry into
the WTO, China quickly learned and adapted to the institutional environment and
rules of the WTO, but was evidently in a weaker and defensive position in
China-EU interaction. Since the EU became China’s biggest trade partner after
2004, trade disputes between the two sides have been increasing, which shows that
the scale of China-EU economic relations has been expanding, and both sides have
become closer and closer to each other in this respect. After 2006, China began to
be the primary target for accusations and complaints from the EU which utilized the
dispute settlement mechanism, and China learned to handle the trade disputes with
the EU using the dispute settlement mechanism step by step. Each side has its gains
and its losses. China and the EU participated in the negotiations in Doha together,
and had the same or similar viewpoints or interests in the way of“single under-
taking”, protected geographical indication, and trade facilitation. China-EU trade
development has been healthy on the whole. After 2008, China-EU relations in the
WTO began to become more equal, but the EU remained the leader of the multi-
lateral trade system, while China, as an active participant in the multilateral trade
system, fell far behind the EU in capacity and position.
It can also be seen in this report that thefinancial crisis spreading all over the
world was starting to change the cooperative relations between China and the EU.
Before the crisis broke out, China was on the edge of the globalfinancial gover-
nance mechanism, so China-EU relations in thisfield were primarily presented as
bilateral. With the rapid depreciation of the US dollar, the strategic significance of
the euro with respect to the RMB rose for a time. China and the EU have agreed
with each other infinancial oversight, and Europe has been deeply engaged in
China’sfinancial reform. Affected by the globalfinancial crisis, G20, in place of
G7, became the most important governance mechanism in globalfinancial affairs,
and China and the EU began to strengthen their cooperation multilaterally and the
exchanges were maturing. The BRICS, made up of China and some other major
emerging economies, and the EU cooperate with and learn from, rather than be in
conflict with, each other, which promotes the reform of globalfinancial governance.
Such cooperation being young, China’s role remains somewhat obscure, but from
the perspective of defining the direction of future developments, cooperation
between China and the EU in thisfield is strategic.
The global energy governance structure is mainly divided into oil-producing
countries (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and oil-consuming
countries (International Energy Agency). The EU used to be one of the biggest
energy consumers in the world, but its energy demand is on the decline, affected by
the European debt crisis, while the consumption of and demand for energy in the
emerging industrial countries, like China, India and Brazil, are on a rapid increase,
the daily oil consumption surpassing that of Western Europe. Meanwhile, Russia is
emerging as the world’s largest oil-producing country. The increase in energy trade
volume beyond the traditional global energy governance system imposes a
14 H. Zhou