EU–China Trade: A Review of the Facts and Where We Stand

Abstract

This chapter provides a contextual insight into the influx of trade—focusing particularly on Chinese exports in goods to the global market. As a comparatively less developed and highly populated country, China held a considerable degree of demand potential for the world’s manufactures and the advantage of low labor cost to produce goods. Over the past decades, China’s market reform and openness have contributed to the better use of such resources, unleashing such a potential strength into practice. For the European companies, China was not only a fresh market for expansion, but also an offshore center to outsource labor-intensive activities to maintain competitiveness. China has also made its best use of this opportunity to learn from the European countries and jumped all the way to become a middle-income economy. This process of China’s rapid globalization and the ensuing knock-on effects on European markets will be evaluated with reference to the current standpoint of EU–China relations.