China and the European Union's Adjusted Trade and Human Rights Policies from Realist-Constructivist Perspective

doi:10.6185/TJIA.V.14.N2.P1P42

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Title:	China and the European Union's Adjusted Trade and Human Rights Policies from Realist-Constructivist Perspective
Authors:	Biedermann, Reinhard
Contributors:	淡江大學全球政治經濟學系
Keywords:	European Union;China;realist-constructivism;trade policy;human rights policy
Date:	2010-10
Issue Date:	2013-02-27 19:29:56 (UTC+8)
Publisher:	New Taipei: Tamkang University
Abstract:	The EU's China policy was not very successful in recent years, with China getting more assertive against EU's positions on human rights and trade policy, putting the "strategic partnership" in question. The EU-China relations experienced its most difficult year in 2008 with China's cancellation of the bilateral summit due to a minor cause. Since the 1990ies, trade and human rights policies of the EU and its member states are intertwined with each other through the "change through trade" idea, where the economic opening process and development shall lead almost automatically to an open society based on democracy and the rule of law. But in recent years, the EU started to reassess its China policy, since China's economy is getting very competitive, whereas progress on human rights and the rule of law is not in sight. As China is getting more powerful, economic interests of the EU policy making might still get more important and conflictive, whereas the human rights policy and value-orientation might lose weight in EU's China policies. Two potentially new important developments and their backgrounds show a reassessment and new sobriety after years of euphoria of EU's thinking on China. First, the "High Economic and Trade Dialogue", set up in 2008, might contribute to solve or embed economic disputes between the world's trade giants. Second, the EU under German presidency in the second half of 2007 had adjusted its Asia policy, stronger emphasizing regional integration and democracy against the background of China's political influence there. Notwithstanding EU's own limitations to act as a coherent actor, the EU tries to find a (new) balance between normative expectations and material gains, where the newly established European External Action Service, a result of the Lisbon Treaty, might be able to make important contributions in that direction in the future. Testing and using a combined realist-constructivist perspective, the article argues that democracy and human rights policy won't become less important in EU-China relations. While trade policy, as a classic material exercise and contrary to EU's recent rhetoric declarations, might get better coordinated and openly discussed with China, the human rights policy of the EU, as a classic constructivist exercise, might get stronger emphasized in East Asia with strategic and therefore realist reference to China and moreover channeled on top of EU's new external service.
Relation:	Tamkang Journal of International Affairs 14(2), pp.1-42
DOI:	10.6185/TJIA.V.14.N2.P1P42
Appears in Collections:	[Department of Global Political Economy] Journal Article

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