EU Trade : The Issues at Stake with China - With the exploration of International Political Economy

China has been the second largest trading partner of EU in goods and the forth largest in services since it joined the WTO in 2001. For its part, the European Union has been China’s largest trading partner since 2004. Despite this, there are a range of issues at stake between the EU and China who are not only involved into economical disputes, but are also at odds on political matters. In this paper the authors conduct the study based on trade hindrances instead of trade achievements with the approaches of IPE based on the assumption: the tenser of trade-ties, the deeper the political dimension involved and the more delicate the relationship between Economy and Politics projected to be. Considering the limitation of time and space, the paper focuses primarily on the trade issues regarded from three different angles: the internal issues related to trade (e.g. trade deficit, IPR infringement); the external issues related to trade (e.g. human rights); the ultimate issues related to trade (e.g. technology). Instead of putting forth feasible resolution to these issues, the main feature of this paper lies in the analysis of trade issues in combination with the approaches of International political economy. It’s interesting and far-reaching to research EU (trade) from the perspective of IPE because as Michael Smith argued “The EU’s place in the IPE is challenging not only in the empirical sense, but also in the conceptual sense, for simple reason that (on the one hand) it is not a state and that (on the other hand) it performs a number of vital state functions in the IPE” (Michael Smith 2006, p.527)