ABSTRACT
The EU and China jointly describe their relationship as a 'comprehensive strategic partnership'. This chapter argues that the EU–China relationship should be understood as an uneasy strategic partnership. Although the specific history of the EU–China relationship starts in the 1960s, this needs to be placed in the context of Europe's earlier imperial role in Asia and China. The more recent history reflects in part the development of the EU, with internal EU cooperation spanning virtually all areas of public policy and a highly institutionalized Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Since the early 1990s, a range of major 'new' issues have come to the fore in global politics, such as peacekeeping and intervention, development policy, terrorism, climate change, cyber security and mass migration. The emergence of these issues coincided with the EU's efforts to establish itself as a global player via its CFSP and China's rise as a global power, thus creating new areas of EU–China intersection.
