issue. As China-EU relations cover extensive areas and invite numerous opportu-
nities, deeper cooperation and more win-win outcomes can be sought on more
aspects.
3.6 Future Challenges
Great changes have taken place in the strengths and positions of both sides and in
the international environment during the decade after the establishment of the
China-EU Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Ten years ago, both China and the
EU were at the stage that was full of forces for booming development. At that time,
the EU was ushering in a round of the most extensive expansion in its history, while
China was meeting challenges from globalization and rapidly adapting to the
international environment after its accession to the WTO, and promoting the
integration of its economy into the global economy. Ten years later, the EU is
beleaguered by the European debt crisis, and the general public has more doubts
about European integration; moreover, people in the EU will give top priority to
continue struggling to handle internal affairs and stimulate economic growth for a
fairly long time, while China is facing challenges in adjusting its economic structure
and transforming its economic growth mode as well as vigorously developing
emerging markets and encouraging the sound development of foreign trade. The EU
market served as the source for China’s economic growth ten years ago, now the
Chinese market has become the source of future growth in which the EU anchors
great hope. China-EU relations have become“too big to fail”.^31
The EU side has constantly voiced trade protectionism since the European debt
crisis, especially in recent years; for example, there is a view that if China does not
open its public procurement market, the EU will also close the door of its public
procurement market to Chinese enterprises; public opinion calls for conducting a
public security review on China’s investments in response to increasingly active
investments from China in the EU. In the areas of telecommunications and pho-
tovoltaic equipment, the European Commission has launched anti-dumping and
anti-subsidy investigations against products exported from China to the EU.
With the emergence of the global value chain, mercantilist practice which
regards exports as a good thing and imports as a bad thing and conducts exchanges
on the basis of reciprocal market access has increasingly failed to justify itself.
Indeed, domestic enterprises can benefit from exports, but they also rely on the
import of reliable world-class products and services to improve productivity and
competitiveness. According to the OECD’s report, earlier liberalization can help
gain the initiative in specialization early, and consolidate one’s own position in the
upstream and downstream industrial chain of the international market as well as
(^31) Fredrik Erixon,“Back to Basics: Economic Reforms and EU-China Relations,”ECIPE Bulletin
No. 09/2012.
88 C. Xin