ABSTRACT
During the Cold War era, China’s relations with Europe (or more precisely the European Union (EU), its predecessor the European Community (EC) and its member states) was regarded as a ‘significant’ but ‘secondary’ relationship, derivative of broader strategic forces (Yahuda 1994, 268–269). Yet, in the years that have followed the ending of the Cold War, the international environment has changed considerably, such that China-EU relations can be argued not only to possess a dynamic of their own, but to have an impact on wider trends. The first decade of the new century witnessed a series of benchmarks—in 2004, for example, the EU surpassed the USA and Japan, to become China’s biggest foreign trade partner. In October 2003 China even went so far as to issue an ‘EU Policy Paper’ (FMPRC 2003a), the first ever foreign policy paper detailing China’s strategy towards a country or group of states.
