CRONOGRAMA DE EJECUCIÓN

As shown above most studies on EU-China relations on the issue of human

rights agree on the failure of the EU and its member states to elaborate

consistent and coordinated policies for the promotion of human rights in China.

However, this thesis argues that the issues of consistency and coordination

rarely refer to the actual EU and member states’ commitments within their

strategy of constructive engagement towards China. Chapter 3 will show that

such a strategy principally relied on positive policies for the promotion of

human rights, i.e. economic engagement, dialogue and development assistance,

while sanctioning policies lost their prominence.

As shown above, most works have only considered the consistency of the

EU’s position at the UNCHR and the arms embargo with the other EU’s

economic and security policies. The UNCHR and the arms embargo fall into the

sanctioning policy of the EU. However, Chapter 3 will argue that the EU has

instead clearly committed to constructively engage China through a positive

47

Carol Glen and Richard Murgo, ‘EU-China Relations: Balancing Political Challenges with Economic Opportunities’, Asia-Europe Journal, No. 5, 2007, pp. 332.

48

approach. Therefore, studying the consistency of the sanctioning policies

automatically leads to proving that the EU has been inconsistent in its human

rights policy towards China. This approach fails to analyse the actual

consistency of the constructive engagement on human rights, which is broadly

based on economic engagement, dialogue and development assistance.

This thesis addresses this shortcoming by concentrating on the consistency of

the EC’s economic engagement and development assistance. Within the strategy

of constructive engagement the EU and its member states have been in favour of

opening up the Chinese economy and helping its transition towards a market

economy with an efficient rule of law. However, economic reform and opening

up to international trade and investments may have significant effects on the

political and social structure of a country and thus on the improvement of

human rights. Therefore, it is necessary to consider whether the EC has

combined its economic approach with a proactive policy in support of human

rights through development assistance. Answering this question allows

discussing as to whether the EC’s development projects were consistent with its

economic policies towards China and whether these two policies were

ultimately consistent with the objective of promoting human rights in the

country.

Similarly, the issue of coordination should also be reconsidered in light of

the EU and its member states’ commitments to constructively engage China.

Most studies have not considered the coordination of the EU’s positive policies

for the promotion of human rights in China, i.e. the economic policies, bilateral

dialogues and development projects, with those of its member states. The

coordination in devising specific sanctions towards China, such as their

positions at the UNCHR and the arms embargo.

However, as will be illustrated in Chapter 3, the EU and its member states’

constructive engagement towards China on human rights is mostly based on

economic engagement, dialogue and development assistance. Therefore

coordination should actually be considered in the articulation of these policies.

In the EU context coordination is the ability of the EU and its member states to

devise common, or at least complementary, policies in pursuit of a specific

objective, in this case the promotion of human rights. Thus in order to provide

an appropriate analysis of coordination, this thesis addresses the coordination of

the EC’s development policies for the promotion of human rights in China with

those of the three selected representative EU member states: Germany, France

and the UK.

As mentioned in section 1.2, in order to explain the policy outputs of the EU

and its member states’ promotion of human rights in China within their strategy

of constructive engagement, this thesis will apply a liberal intergovernmental

approach. This theoretical approach will be combined with an analytical focus

on the system of multilevel governance in the EU’s external relations. In this

way this thesis will offer an original contribution to the EU-China literature on

the issue of human rights by providing a more accurate analysis of the actual

strategy of constructive engagement and by explaining it through a framework

developed on the basis of the contemporary theorising on the EU’s external

relations. This provides the main contribution of this thesis to the EU-China

literature on human rights.

While considering the consistency and coordination of the EC and the three

consider their appropriateness to the specific context of the country. Although

the EU may have at times produced consistent and coordinated economic and

development policies towards China, these are not sufficient to achieve success.

The latter depends significantly on the ability to devise and pursue strategies in

line with the country’s needs and internal situation.

Most studies presuppose that the EU’s policies are appropriate to the

situation in China. They do so because only rarely do they study the actual

positive policies carried out and their relation with China’s internal

development. Almost no study on the EU’s approach to human rights in China

has provided any analysis of the projects in the field and the dialogues.49

Similarly most of the EU-China literature subscribes to the EU’s argument:

more political and economic interaction leads to the improvement of human

rights.

However this is an argument which is far from proven. First, economic

reform and opening have a substantial effect on the social and political situation

of a country, which may be positive or otherwise for human rights. Second,

economic growth may, at least in the short term, favour the survival of

authoritarian regimes. The authoritarian development system of some Asian

states is the best evidence of this.

In summation, while closely analysing the consistency and coordination of

the EC and the three selected member states’ policies for the promotion of

human rights in China, this thesis will also reflect on their appropriateness to the

Chinese context. The combined analysis of consistency, coordination and, to a

lesser extent, appropriateness of the EU and the three selected member states’

49

A recent exception is Richard Balme’s article on The European Union, China and Human Rights. See Richard Balme, ‘The European Union, China and Human Rights’, in Zaki Laïdi, (ed.), EU Foreign Policy in a Globalized World. Normative Power and Social Preferences.

policies for the promotion of human rights will be used to assess the EU’s

ability to balance normative and material priorities in its constructive

engagement of China. In order to set the context against which to assess the

appropriateness of the policies for the promotion of human rights in China, the

next section discusses the Chinese human rights discourse and practice.