Regional and bilateral cooperation is somewhat exclusive, and if such cooper-
ation is excessive, it will obviously undermine the validity of the existing world
trade rules, and could even lead to fragmentization of the rules and to the Spaghetti
Bowl Effect, which would severely affect the reliability of the WTO and the
multilateral trade system, and this will also exert an adverse impact on China-EU
coordination and cooperation within the framework of the WTO.
In response to this, we must take it seriously and conduct a careful evaluation,
but too much worry is unnecessary. First, history can offer some enlightenment.
This is very similar to the situation around the 1990s when the Uruguay Round got
into trouble; the US-led developed countries shifted to regionalism, thus the North
American Free Trade Area emerged against such a background. Pressure was
applied to multilateral negotiations through regionalism so as to obtain more
favorable negotiation results. Second, reality can also provide some answers.
The WTO is a mature international intergovernmental organization, while multi-
lateral trade governance is an institutionalizedfield with a relatively high degree of
legalization; although some practices in the current new wave of regionalism have
gone beyond the existing WTO legal framework and (severe) sway occurs in the
short run, the WTO will still be the main channel for free trade, and other forms will
only serve as a (beneficial) supplement to the main channel; the two will not
compete and replace each other in the medium and long term. At the China-EU
Summit in September, 2012, both sides emphasized the importance of an open,
predictable, rule-based and transparent multilateral trade system and vowed to be
committed to ensuring the central role of the WTO.^27
The USA has an obvious strategic orientation towards China, while the EU does
not necessarily have such an orientation, at least it is not so obvious as that of the
USA. Whether in the Doha Round negotiations or in the free trade area agreement
negotiations, parties concerned openly talk about trade issues, but secretly struggle
to obtain the right to develop new international trade rules and the right to lead, in
which the economic and trade strength is behind the scene. In such competition,
China-EU coordination and cooperation in the WTO is affected somewhat and
subject to some uncertainties; but in general, the tendency for the better will not and
cannot change. Experience in the past decade shows that the two most important
factors affecting China-EU interaction in the WTO were significant improvements
in China’s economic and trade strength and economic difficulties for the EU after
- The latter were more uncertain than the former. Construction of new friendly
interactive mature relations between China and the EU requires more efforts from
both sides. Thus China should endeavor to improve its capability for participating
in international trade affairs and developing international trade rules; fundamen-
tally, this lies in further enhancing China’s economic and trade strength.
In addition, in the WTO as a multilateral platform, China and the EU engaged in
bilateral cooperation mostly driven by mutual concerns and common interests in the
(^27) Joint Statement of the 15th China-EU Summit, September 21, 2012, Paragraph 42,http://www.
gov.cn/jrzg/2012-09/21/content_2229701.htm.
6 China-EU Relations in the Context of Global Trade Governance 137