Chapter 9
China-EU Relations in the Context
of Global Climate Governance
Fu Cong
Abstract Global warming currently is one of the major challenges facing the
whole world. Mitigation and adaptation to the climate change has become a core
issue on the global governance agenda. China and the European Union are two key
players engaged in global climate governance, on which their interactions have a
great influence. China and the EU depend on each other in the development of a
low-carbon economy, while, at the same time, they cooperate and compete in the
construction of rules and regulations concerning climate change, and have gone
through three stages in the UN climate change agreement negotiations. China and
the EU should keep on cooperating in global climate change governance, which
would be helpful for both parties in solving their own problems and improving their
international status.
Keywords Climate change governanceChinaEuropean unionChina-EU
relationship
Addressing global warming is one of the core public issues concerning global
governance. Carbon emission is closely related to current human economic
development and social life, thus how to build a governance system for addressing
climate change will exert a far-reaching impact on shaping and evolvement of future
international political economic patterns.
China and the EU are important players in global climate change governance,
thus China-EU cooperation has an important influence on the process of global
climate change governance. China has become the largest greenhouse gas emission
country in the world since 2006 and the second largest economy since 2010 as well
as an active participant in global climate change governance. The EU is the third
largest greenhouse gas emission source in the world. The EU is ranked No. 2 in the
world in terms of historical cumulative emission since 1850, only second to the
USA. The economic aggregate of the 27 EU countries is ranked No. 1 in the world.
F. Cong (&)
Institute of European Studies, CASS, Beijing, People’s Republic of China
©Social Sciences Academic Press and Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017
H. Zhou (ed.),China-EU Relations, Research Series on the Chinese Dream
and China’s Development Path, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1145-0_9
167