PARTNER, COMPETITOR, RIVAL: CHINA AS A CHALLENGE FOR THE EU

The EU has greatly benefited from China’s economic rise. Yet meanwhile the challenges are increasingly threatening to outweigh the opportunities that come with it. China is becoming more and more aggressive internationally and is using economic dependencies more purposefully to achieve political goals. In the future, the EU must, therefore, manage the difficult task of reducing critical dependencies on China while keeping channels open for cooperation in certain key areas, such as climate change. Moreover, Europe must ensure that its own interests are sufficiently safeguarded in the practice of relations between the two superpowers, the US and China. This requires, on the one hand, the EU to act much more as a unit. On the other hand, it must more strongly diversify its external relations. It ought to place a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region. The aim of this module, therefore, is to work together with partners from politics, business and think tanks to (further) develop and implement a coherent EU strategy with regard to China and the Asia-Pacific region.