China-EU_Relations_Reassessing_the_China-EU_Comprehensive_Strategic_Partnership

the one hand China’s trade surplus with the EU and the USA, and on the other hand
China’s trade deficit with East Asian countries and territories including Japan,
South Korea, Taiwan (China), etc. widened almost at the same time. As enormous
production shifted from East Asian countries and territories to China, their trade
surplus with the EU and the USA greatly declined. In other words, originally,
commodities were directly exported to the EU and the USA from these East Asian
countries and territories, but after China’s entry into the WTO, semi-manufactured
products and parts were exported from these countries and territories to China and
then exported to the EU and the USA after being processed and assembled in
China; thus the trade triangle among China, East Asia, the US/the EU as shown in
Fig.3.6took shape.^19 As one party in the trade triangle, China increased its exports
to the EU from 23.8 billion USD in 1997 to 245.2 billion USD in 2007, repre-
senting a growth of more than 9 times within ten years, while the EU’s imports
from Asia within the same period only increased by less than 10 %.^20 Actually,
China’s exports to the EU replaced exports from other East Asian economies to the
EU,^21 while China-EU bilateral trade data did not reflect such a situation.
Second, European and American manufacturers imported semi-manufactured
products from the Chinese Mainland, made them into manufactured products in the

America, EU

China

East Asian countries and

regions, such as Japan, South

Korea, China Taiwan

Trade surplus increases

Trade deficit increases

Trade deficit

decreases

Trade surplus

decreases

Trade surplus

increases

Trade deficit

increases

Fig. 3.6 The Trade triangle among China, the US/EU and East Asia.SourceQuoted from Zhou
et al. ( 2009 )

(^19) The original author built a triangle model among China, the US, and other East Asian countries.
Based on this model, the Author of this paper adopted the EU’s data in recent years for validation
and believed that a similar triangle model also existed among China, the EU and East Asian
countries and territories including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan (China), etc.
(^20) European Commission,“EU China Trade in Facts and Figures,”MEMO/09/40, Brussels, 30
January, 2009.
(^21) Freytag ( 2008 ).
80 C. Xin