Walter Hutchens’ Blog

The EU’s” Country Strategy Paper” on China can be obtained from this site (or directly here as a PDF).

It states, “The key objective of the EU’s policy towards China is to support the continued reform and transition processes and to engage China further in the international community and to integrate it further into the world economy[.]”

To get there, the EC proposes to focus on three areas:

The first focus for EC-China co-operation will be to support and provide increased sustainability in China’s economic and social reform process mainly through institutional strengthening and capacity building, human resources development and the promotion of a
sound business regulatory framework and the transfer of know-how and technology in the private sector.

The second focus will be the promotion of sustainable development and assisting China to pursue a better balance between environmental protection, social development and economic growth. The EU could provide knowledge and expertise to assist China’s pursuit of better environmental performance particularly where there is a global consequence, e.g. climate change. Expertise should also help identify a path of economic development, first to facilitate control over the causes of environmental degradation, then over the longer term, to progress towards reversal of the damage and improvement of the environment, and ways to upgrade bilateral co-operation on global environmental issues will be explored.

The third focus will be to encourage good governance initiatives, promote the rule of law, promote grass-roots democracy and the implementation of economic, social and political and civil rights and strengthening of the structures and processes that make up the fabric of a
strong civil society.

At this level of generality, there’s nothing for China’s government to balk at. However, official PRC and EC notions will diverge once (if) definitions are given to “rule of law,” “democracy,” “civil rights” and “civil society.”

The Chinese Communist Party is all for democracy, so long as it doesn’t involve, you know, actual competition for power among multiple political parties.

The same caveat applies to CCP enthusiasm for civil rights, civil society, rule of law and so forth. It’s all good, so long as they remain in charge.

The EC doesn’t explicitly state that they want China’s one-party system to whither away, but that seems implicit in encouraging all those things in the third “foci.” The Chinese Communist Party has no plans to whither.

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