The EU and China: talk to each other or talk across each other

The EU and China are both partners and competitors. They share certain common interests but have disagreements on some other issues. Both sides have published a number of policy papers in the past three decades: six by the EU and three by China. This paper will first examine the EU’s policy papers one by one to find how the EU’s China policy evolves and then look at China’s EU policy papers to understand its objectives in relationship with the EU and compare the convergences and divergences between the EU and China revealed by these policy papers. In doing so, some keywords are selected from these documents. Some of them demonstrate how the relationship evolves and some others reveal the rising differences between the two. As the policy papers are important official documents to understand the objectives and actions of both the EU and China, a study of these policy papers would help highlight from where the relationship came and to where it is going.