Relations between China and Europe have traveled a fluctuant course since 1949. To a significant extent, China's relations with both Eastern and Western Europe have been a function of its broader pattern of relations with the Soviet Union and the United States. Yet, in both cases, independent factors have served to sustain and strain ties. This article examines the course and dynamics of these relationships over the past four decades. Sino-European relations today are businesslike yet fragile—a fragility that the receding Cold War, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, and the West European common market of 1992 will all serve to intensify.
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References
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1. See “The Differences between Comrade Togliatti and Us,”Peking Review, 4 Jan. 1963, pp. 1, 4.
2.
2. William E. Griffith, “China and Europe: Weak and Far Away,” in The China Factor, ed. Richard Solomon (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981), p. 171.
3.
3. See Nina P. Halpern, “Learning from Abroad: Chinese Views of the East European Economic Experience, January 1977-June 1981,”Modern China (Jan. 1985).
4.
4. See David L. Shambaugh, The Making of a Premier: Zhao Ziyang's Provincial Career (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), chap. 6.
5.
5. See Michael B. Yahuda, “China and Europe: The Significance of a Secondary Relationship,” in Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
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6. See D. A. Andelman, “China's Balkan Strategy,”International Security, Winter 1979-80, pp. 60-79.
7.
Also see Harsh Kapur, China and the European Economic Community: The New Connection (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986).
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8. Of many such analyses, see Si Kunyang, “The Position and Role of Western Europe in Present World Politics,”Journal of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs, 1988, no. 7, pp. 43-52.
9.
as cited in Jean-Pierre Cabestan, “Sino-European Relations,” in Chinese Politics and Foreign Policy Reform, ed. Gerald Segal (London: Kegan Paul International, 1990), p. 219.
10.
10. I am indebted to Alyson J. K. Bailes for bringing this to my attention.
11.
11. For further discussion of the European reaction to Tiananmen, see Mary Brown Bullock, “The Effects of Tiananmen on China's International Scientific and Educational Cooperation,” in China's Economic Dilemmas in the 1990s: The Problems of Reforms, Modernization, and Interdependence, ed. U.S., Cong., Joint Economic Committee, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1991).
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12. Xiao Qu, “Hopes and Hurdles in Sino-EC Ties,”China Daily, 24 Dec. 1990.
13.
13. Personal communication from a Sinologist in Czechoslovakia.
14.
14. For more on this campaign and post-Tiananmen indoctrination in the People's Liberation Army, see David Shambaugh, “The Soldier and the State in China: The Political Work System in the People's Liberation Army,”China Quarterly (Sept. 1991).
