partnership”became the key words for the EU side to define the relations with China,
and there emerged different or even opposing opinions on the wording, nature and
connotation of the China-EU Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. After the Lisbon
Treaty (2007) was signed, the European Union gained more power over foreign
affairs, which also brought more variables to the form, rules, tools and approaches for
the double diplomacy of the EU, making it more difficult for China and the EU to
understand each other and creating greater possibility for misunderstanding.
Since 2007, different definitions of the China-EU Comprehensive Strategic
Partnership have emerged one after another. InChina-EU: A Common Future
(2007) edited by Stanley Crossick and Etienne Reuter, the authors tried to prove
that China and the EU, faced with common challenges, share many“commonali-
ties”, China-EU relations are global and strategic, and China and the EU share a
“common future”.^13 Jonathan Holslag criticized, in hisEurope and China: The
Great Disillusion(2007),^14 that the Brussels’policy of“conditional engagement”
towards China was not working. He also forecasted growing competition due to
Europe’s relative lack of innovation. In “The Elusive Axis: Assessing the
EU-China”by Holslag and“A Power Audit of EU-China Relations”by J. Fox and
F. Godement, the authors affirm that the EU should change its policy towards
China, and they are against the EU’s“conditioned engagement”policy towards
China. According to them, the China-EU“comprehensive strategic partnership is
illusory”and it is proper for the EU to handle EU-China relations through“interests
offset with interests and concerns offset with concerns”.^15 In 2008 and 2009, some
Chinese academics and their partners also published a series of works and articles
about how to understand China-EU relations, arguing that both sides have conflicts
and differences at the social, public and ideological level while they are trying to
expand and seek cooperation opportunities between each other.^16
Obviously, China and the EU had disagreements and even disputes over the
understanding of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. China and the EU had
their own dissatisfactions and appeals.^17 China was dissatisfied with the EU’s delay
in removing the arms embargo, its refusal to recognize the role of the market
economy in China, its denouncing China’s human rights status, and its occasional
challenging of China’s core interests in the Dalai issue. The EU frequently criti-
cized China for its trade deficit, intellectual property, human rights status, and
market access, and the EU also initiated anti-dumping and anti-subsidy
(Footnote 12 continued)
Francis Snyder, the Chinese edition translated by Li Jingkun et al., Social Sciences Academic
Press (China), 2013, pp. 468–481.
(^13) See Crossick and Reuter ( 2007 ).
(^14) See Holslag ( 2006 ).
(^15) See Renard ( 2011 ).
(^16) Such as Shen ( 2008 ), Zhou (2008a) and“The Chinese Perceptions of Europe in 2008”[China
Journal of European Studies, 2009(5)], and so on.
(^17) See Cameron ( 2012 ).
1 An Overview of the China-EU Strategic Partnership (2003–2013) 9