 So, EU-China relations is really a very complicated and big issue. We know that in the recent years, EU-China relations are developing very fast, but there are also some kind of disputes or problems. So what will it happen and what will it evolve in the future? That is a very complicated issue. So here I just talked something about my personal opinion from the perspective of a common Chinese professor. So my topic is about the prospect of the future of the China-EU relations after the China-EU summit and the 2020 strategic agenda for cooperation. And we know that EU and China are important. So if we want to look at the strategic pattern of China-EU relations, perhaps we should first explore the exact positions of China and the EU in the world currently. Now, of course, the first is that China and the EU are the two of the largest economies of the world. For example, this is statistical data, which shows that now recently in the year 2012, according to the data calculated by IMF, China and the EU are two of the largest economies of the world. The EU as a whole, of course, accounts for the largest proportion of the GDP total of the world, and the United States is the second largest one, and then China is the third largest one. So here, from this statistical data, we can see that China and the EU are both very important and are both relatively big in terms of the economic scales. And because they're big and they're important, it's inevitably that they will get in touch with each other, and it's inevitably that they shall negotiate, get in touch with each other, or cooperate with each other in many fields of the world and regional affairs. And also, we can see that very interestingly that the relative positions of EU, China, the United States, and other major players in the past three decades might relatively change a little bit. So that might bring some new variables or new impacts towards the pattern of the world order. Now here, this is also the data that I collected from the IMF, and I turned it into this graph, this figure. Now here it shows that in the past three decades, the major countries, GDPs, as percentages of the world total. If we look at this, we can see that... Now this line, the top line is the EU as a whole. It's GDP as a percentage of the world total. In the past three decades, here we can see that the EU's relative position of the world is gradually declining a little bit, perhaps. And this second line, this dark green one, is US GDP as a percentage of the world total. This is also perhaps a little bit declined. Now here we see that in the 1980, the EU's GDP is one-thirds of the world total, around one-thirds. And then on the last year, it is around one-fifths of the world total. And here the United States, in the 1980s, the United States is one-fourth, and now around one-fifths. And this purple line is China's GDP as a percentage of the world total. If you look at the data, we will find out that in the 1980s, China's GDP was less than five percent of the world total. But after three decades, very quick development, the China's GDP now accounts for around 15 percent of the world total. So the relative positions are changing, which also brings some, I think, inevitably brings some kind of change to the world order and also to the relations of the different economies and also different players of international relations. So the new changes and the important positions will inevitably push the EU and China together. The second important point is that China and the EU are all the major forces shaping the global politics. I think this is known to everyone. And the third point is just we caught the relative changes of the relative relations of China and the EU in the world economy. So these are the three points that I think can explain the current positions of the EU and China in the world. So this means that there is a very strong basis for China and the EU to inevitably get engaged with each other. This is the first point. Now, as for the relations between two players, I think that they are forces, they are always forces to push the players together and they are always forces to pull the forces apart. I remember that when I was in middle school, the physics teacher told us that when the two atoms are too far away from each other, they might be attracted and they might approach each other. And when the two atoms are too close to each other and then the attracting forces might be overwhelmed by the repulsive forces and then the two atoms might get a little bit far away from each other. This is a physical rule. But I think that in the international relations, sometimes there are always the similar phenomenon that is sometimes when the two players are far away from each other, but they have some internal inherent demand to get closer to approach, to get more cooperation or to get more coordination, they will gradually approach each other. But at the same time, there might be some forces to pull them apart or get away from each other. So this is also a kind of international relations phenomenon, perhaps. So I think that if we want to look at the future of the EU-China relations, perhaps we shall look at some of the forces that can push China and the EU together. And from my understanding, I make this summarization over these four forces that could push China and the EU together. The first one is the demand for both sides to promote the mutual trade. If we look at the trade, this very interesting phenomenon that is, now there is a triangular pattern in the world trade. This is, I think, a consensus of some kind of the economic studies. That is, we know that the EU and the US is on the one part of the triangular. And then for the developed East Asian countries, such as Japan, such as the four Asian tigers, they are on the other side. And then China and the Asian countries are on the other side. So it forms a triangular. The technology and the capital flows from the United States and the EU relatively to Japan and the four Asian tigers. And also the technology and the capital flows from Japan and the four Asian tigers to China, mainly in China and the Southeast Asian countries. And at the same time, cheap consumer goods flows from China and us into the EU and the United States. Relatively more sophisticated, expensive goods flows from the United States to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, South Korea and Taiwan also produce their relatively cheaper but also sophisticated goods. And then these goods or these products flows from them to mainland China and Asian countries. And so as for the trade side, the China is, the China's trade position is relatively not very favorable perhaps. If we look at the so-called famous smiling curve of the distribution of the value of a product, that we can see that China because its huge labor force in the past and also because of its general economic demographic conditions, it's on the lowest part of the value chains. So it can usually export relatively cheap consumer goods. Its trade structures are relatively, is relatively on the lower end. But the situation is always changing. And so the China's trade with major economies also is changing in the past several decades. Now here this is also a calculation that I take the data from the China's National Statistical Bureau. And here it shows the trade, the total volume of China's trade with major economies as a percentage of China's total foreign trade, which means just how much proportion China's trade with a specific economy takes to the total. And it shows the relative changes of China's trade relations with major economies here. Now here we can see again, now we will see that China EU trade is maintaining a kind of steady pace. It is still on a very important position while this line is China US trade. Can you see that? The China US trade is relatively declining. There are many reasons I think that economists may have made a lot of researches of this. Why is the relative importance of China US trade in the recent years declined? Perhaps because of the more and more protectionist trends in the US, policy making in the US society. Or perhaps because of the shrinking of the market of demand for China's consumer goods after the 2008 crisis. Just in recent years it declined. But anyway China EU trade is maintaining still a steady pace which means that China EU trade is still very important for ours and for the Europe. And this is China-Japan trade. It's proportion to the total. The China-Japan trade is this purple line. So the China-Japan trade is also declining. There's much, much more complicated analysis. For example, we know that in the last year and the year before last the Diaoyu Island dispute between China and Japan, this actually contributed a lot to the sudden or disruptive changes of the China-Japan economic relations. After the dispute, after the breakout of the dispute, after the collision of the fishing boats, the Chinese tourist to the Japan actually was reduced by a great margin. And also now it was said, and it is said now that the Japanese car manufacturers now are finding it more and more difficult to sell more cars in China's market. It's relatively a very delicate relations. And so here from this figure we can just find out that actually the China-EU trade is still maintaining a very important position, which means EU is important to us. And I think China is also important for EU. So the trade is still a very fundamental force that could push or bring China and EU together. The second is the demand for both sides, of both sides for broader access to the mutual investment. And if you look at the 2020 strategic agenda for more cooperation between EU and China, you may find that the mutual investment is a very important or key issue that are concerned by the policymakers and researchers and academics of both sides. And so let's look at the investment. But still there is much, much space for the development of the investment because the EU's investment in China still relatively takes a minor proportion to the total foreign direct investment that flows into China. This is also a statistic that I calculated from the data collected from the China's National Statistics Bureau. And here you will find that actually the investment from Hong Kong, this green one, is a major proportion of the total foreign direct investment that flows into the mainland in China. And the EU and the US investment in China relatively takes a smaller proportion. It's not very, very important. So it means that we have much more broad space to attract more EU investment if conditions permit, if there's relatively more comfortable environment. And this is a country distribution of EU direct investment into China from the past decade. Now here, these are the different... Here I just collected data about the different countries FDI into China. Mainly we will find that Germany is relatively always important. Now here this is the orange-red section of each column. Can you see that? We know that Germany has a very huge... has a very large investment in the industry of China. The automotive industry, the chemical industry, and many, many industries or manufacturing of Germany put investment in China. So Germany always takes a very important position. And as for other countries, I think Netherlands also increases its investment in China. Netherlands, the whole land in China, in Chinese we call it Helan. They had a substantial investment in the manufacturing sector in some of the electronics or something like that. This is the breakdown of the major FDI sources into China in some total. I think it reflects a similar pattern. This is also a similar pattern of Shanghai. In Shanghai the situation perhaps a little bit different is that in Shanghai the investment from the European from the United States takes a larger proportion because Shanghai is relatively or more internationalized city with relatively perhaps more complete or better infrastructure for investment. In other provinces of China, particularly in the southeastern provinces such as Guangdong or Zhejiang perhaps just the investment from Japan and South Korea and Taiwan and Hong Kong will take a larger proportion to the total. Now let's look at China's investment to other countries. And for China again we can see that because Chinese are more similar to the Asia, East Asia. So China's investment mainly into sorry into East Asia and China's investment in the Europe relatively still takes much smaller proportion to the total. And this is another statistic reflecting the similar pattern. So I will not make too much explanation perhaps. Here ODI sorry ODI it's a term that usually Chinese like to use. ODI here means ODI means overseas direct investment which means investment flowing from China to other countries understand. And China's investment in Europe and in the United States sometimes encounters some unexpected difficulties. There are some vigilance, there are some kind of the obstructions to the Chinese investment because here we can see that the majority of China's investment actually in the overseas in the foreign countries are made by the state-owned corporations and because state-owned corporations has the government background so usually I think that in the United States and in the Europe people may not be so friendly towards the state-owned corporations investment and so that might be a reason. But anyway those foreign-funded corporations those foreign investment in China actually has got a very good reputation and they hope to expand some kind of the investment if condition permits and Chinese people really attach great importance to the foreign investment into China's industries and Chinese people and policy makers also hope that the foreign direct investment in China could be expanded substantially in the future and this is a list of the top ten foreign-funded corporations in China or the ten largest foreign-funded corporations in China and we can see that you will find that here the European-based corporations account for a majority of the top ten foreign-funded corporations in China here. Now we can find Germany there are three German corporations in this list and one Finland corporation one Sweden one France so here in these top ten corporations we can see that actually the substantial economic connection between China and Europe actually is strong and so it's reasonable that in China people really hope that in the future this strong relation could be expanded and promoted further and further and this is the top ten foreign-funded corporations in Shanghai and here Germany's corporation still takes a relatively dominating position these are all the calculations made by I think by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and another very important aspect that will bring China closer to Europe is China's demands for EU's expertise on the sustainable development the European Union is a mature economy it has relatively complete and perfect legal environment its policy making towards its market towards its trade towards its investment relatively are experienced and sophisticated and so the European Union has much experience and expertise and know-how about how to maintain the economy moving relatively on a smooth course or a smooth pace that is what China needs because China's economy is developing sometimes not so steady at a not so steady pace China's economy actually is developing always full of ups and downs or twists and turns people always say that China maintains a high-speed growth but if you look at China's GDP growth in the past three decades the China's growth is always full of ups and downs it's not a steady one now here you will see that this is a now this blue line is the GDP growth rate in China in the past three decades around now here you will see many ups and downs because China's economy's pace is closely connected to its political situations and also the world environment and here the recent the most recent peak is on the 2007 2007 this one 2007 the US market the US real estate market got its peak of prosperity and the US demands towards China's cheap consumer goods perhaps rose to the highest level and there was prosperity in the whole world economy so China's export really plays a played a very important role to promote China's GDP growth rate and then we can see that up to 2007-2018 so on the China's economy's GDP growth rate is gradually forced down and then up a little bit and then forward down a little bit there's always ups and downs because you know that there are so-called the due engine of China's economic growth so what are the due engine? yes very good so export is usually the export is usually prepared by the private sector of China's economy the Chinese private corporations played the major role to push the export so from the 2007 when the export market was shrinking gradually the Chinese government depended more and more on the heavy investment of the infrastructure project to push up the economic growth to push up the GDP level and that will bring some time to bring some problems because we all know that there is a strong rule in the economy which caused the diminishing margin of return of the investment so China's demand for the EU's expertise is connected to China's characteristic of its current economic structure because China's economic structure needs more upgrading so China needs the EU more not only needs the EU's export market and investment but also needs more cooperation about technological transfer about EU's expertise and something like that so let's look at China's economic structure firstly is that China's economy is for the past several decades propelled or pushed by the dominance of the labor-intensive manufacturing sector now here this is China's industrial structure in the past three decades this red one is the manufacturing sector manufacturing sector still in these years it still accounts for around 40% or a little bit less than 40% of the total GDP this means that manufacturing dominates China's economy but usually it's a service sector that might get a higher profit rate that might bring more returns so this economic structure needs to be upgraded this is Shanghai's economic structure so here you will see that if we take Shanghai as an example now Shanghai's economic structure is also still dominated by the manufacturer it's not like Hong Kong Hong Kong is largely financial-based or financial-oriented but Shanghai is still relatively largely manufacturer-oriented this is a general pattern this is a distribution of Shanghai's pattern I will not talk too much and because of China's economy is largely exported and investment-based so the investment now becomes a leading force to push up China's economic growth and here, sorry this is the investment rate of major countries in the past three decades now here the data is collected from IMF now here again you can see that actually the China's investment rate is much, much higher than many other countries now here you will see that this yellow line is China's investment rate it is higher so investment means huge savings and this economic structure is relatively rigid and not very flexible and so when the economic growth rate becomes a major concern for the policy makers the whole structure needs an overhaul and how to do this overhaul we need the expertise or knowledge from the Europe and we need more cooperation and coordination with the EU this is some of the data I just omitted I think what's second is that China demands for the EU's expertise on the urbanization process in the coastal areas of China it is highly urbanized for some parts but in the inland China it is still far away from a relatively mature urbanization because China is a large country with a large territory so here you will find in the 2020 strategic cooperation agenda for China and the EU the cooperation or coordination between China and the EU for the urbanization takes major attention from many of the Chinese leaders and so here now China has escalated or relatively unbalanced economic structure the distribution of the income of GDP level of GDP per capita level is highly unbalanced this pattern cannot be changed so easily this means that in China the urbanization also could be pushed in an escalated way and how to push this it needs a kind of internal coherence we know that in the EU's policy agenda the EU's internal coherence is a very important part or perhaps from our perspective in the EU's policy about coherence, about regional coherence about some kind of regional or internal coordination this is the part that attracts China's attention greatly because we also have highly unbalanced structure now this data is old it's about around more than 10 years ago China's income distribution level the brighter the color means the higher the level of income of that province is understand? so here you will see the coastal areas much more wealthy than the inland areas it's a highly unbalanced one and this is the income structure distribution of the GDP per capita for different provinces in 2008 it's a similar structure and this is 2010 still the general pattern has not been changed a prediction over the distribution of the GDP per capita level for 2015 still a similar pattern so this means China's distribution, China has a high level imbalance of the geographical distribution of the economic resources and income levels so China's urbanization process will also be a kind of unbalanced one and we need help from the European Union about the expertise about the coherence this is also a statistical data showing the imbalance of income of different regions so we have talked to two major forces that are pushing China closer to EU China has such an inherent demand for more cooperation from EU and also I think that China and EU share some of the major interests on some of the global and regional fears I heard from some of the people in the Brussels who says that now there is a power shift in the world that China and the United States seem to be playing a more and more influential role in the East Asia or North East Asia's regional security affairs and the EU shall also have its own saying in the regional affairs about the North East Asia so this means that EU and China share some common interest first is common interest about regional economic integration we hear if we compare the regional economic integration sorry no, no, no if we compare the regional economic integration of the European of East Asia we may find that the Europe is highly developed now this is a more detailed comparison of the regional integration level of East Asia and Europe now here we will find that the East Asia is still on the level of establishing broader free trade areas FTAs of favorable trading areas but the European Union not only has created its own eurozone but also is also considering some kind of fiscal union or banking union so in terms of regional integration I think EU can offer a lot of the experiences and knowledge to the East Asia and the East Asia countries including China when we are thinking about how to push the East Asia economic integration we might need help from EU and we might perhaps have more opportunity to cooperate more closely with EU as for the East Asia economic integration this is a structure of the East Asia bilateral integration mechanism already in effect it is still incomplete and it only covers a part of the East Asia so it needs more perfection this is the this is the blueprint for the East Asia economic integration in the future these are the proposals made by policy makers of China or Japan or Korea there are much talks about these particularly the East Asia FTA 3 the Chinese I think the Chinese academics and Chinese policy makers really have a great expectation on the East Asia FTA 3 the East Asia free trade area the East Asia free trade area includes China mainland China and also South Korea and Japan and if possible Taiwan but there are still talks and no substantial achievement has ever been made already perhaps on this kind of mechanism particularly after the deterioration of the China-Japan relations and now there are talks of the TIPP sorry there are talks about the TPP in the East Asia they are more complicated it is more complicated so there are much researches of the East Asia economic integration that we might think that the Europe might give a hand to us and then the security affairs or strategic relations of the East Asia, South East Asia first is the Korean Peninsula I think everyone knows this some of my friends are actually working on the Korean Star days and the situation on the Korean Peninsula it is not so good actually the Cold War has never ended in East Asia it has never ended in East Asia so there is still Cold War confrontations so in Europe many scholars, I found many literature in Europe and many scholars in Europe say since the end of the Cold War blah blah blah but actually I think from the Chinese perspective or from the East Asia perspective the Cold War has not ended there are still much security concerns about this and there is Diao Yu Island dispute that got escalated in the past several years there are many reasons for this sorry sorry sorry yes you know where is Diao Yu Island great and also South China Sea disputes this is another great potential danger and still there is no substantial settlement for this and I heard someone from the EEAS which says that EU is interested to participate in the negotiations or the settlement for the security issues of this region I don't know exactly how is that but anyway a great concern now enters the major strategic thinking of Chinese academics and policymakers about the South China Sea there are many of these many data materials I will not talk too much about this well this is is the time okay? okay now we have talked about the forces that could push China and EU together to push China and EU closer and particularly I talk about the Chinese perspective in which fields we need EU and we hope to get more coordination from EU and now let's look at some of the current forces that might pull China and EU apart I think these several forces that might pull China and EU apart first they are still about the economics about trade imbalance as for the bilateral trade imbalance EU and the United States are always the two trade partners that might get the largest trade deficit from its trade with China here it is and this issue will remain I think a dividing issue perhaps between China and EU but relatively I think it's not so difficult to get some settlement after some negotiations there will always be some arrangement I think that this may not be very difficult but this is still an issue the trade deficit deficit of EU with China this is another statistics similar pattern this is sorry this is China's total volumes of exporting import with major trade partners in the recent years we will see that and of course here China means mainland China and here we will see that always EU and the United States and Hong Kong are the three economies that got the largest deficit from its trade with China while at the same time Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are always the biggest winner from their trade with China they make a lot of money each year from their trade with China and the statistics statistics are always monotonous and so in recent years the EU's dissatisfaction with this trade imbalance has been increasing so from China we made some statistics over European commissions anti-dumping countervailing investigations against China in the past several years and we will find that actually the EU's anti-dumping countervailing investigation cases against China actually account for over one-third of its total cases in the past several years that means the situation is really relatively serious perhaps the trade disputes are a great concern for many Chinese academics and policy makers and also for the Chinese industries because the EU and the United States are two of the largest markets for China's private sectors and also for some of China's state-owned corporations so whenever there are disputes there will always be an internal negotiation and coordination mechanism for Chinese industries and Chinese policy makers to get united together to work out some proposals so I think this is a great concern and in the future this is an issue that will attract Chinese concerns so nowadays the Chinese corporations are beginning to think about lobbying in EU when I came to the Irish Embassy in Brussels to apply for a visa it was amazing for me to find that a very famous Chinese corporation is located in the same building as the Irish Embassy in Brussels can you find that Huawei is a very famous Chinese corporation telecommunication it is about telecommunication technologies this corporation was very ambitious in the past several years to expand its investment in the United States and in the European Union but unexpectedly it got much frustrations because the US Congress conducting some investigations against Huawei and said to Huawei that you cannot merge this corporation without that and then in Europe Huawei also encountered serious setbacks or frustrations so now Huawei established a representative office in Brussels to do some work and I heard very interesting that someone says that it is now learning the skills to do some lobbying lobbying is a totally new phenomenon for Chinese because of the difference of the political systems perhaps I think the Chinese corporations are learning to do this this is a very new phenomenon it is totally new but it is very interesting so I have talked about the major forces that might try to pull China and the EU apart there are disputes about the trade imbalance there are EU's distrust about China's about the China's investment and also about the China's also about the social effect that China will bring to the Europe after its investment for example in the European Union there are independent trade unions and there are very high level of standards for labor for environmental protection but these are new phenomenon that Chinese corporations might sometimes do not know anything at all so when China make investment to the European Union these social issues might become kind of the source of dispute and the third one is issues related to the human rights and democracy this is about the different perceptions of Chinese officials and policy makers and the EU about the more deep deep-looted differences of the political sides of the EU-China relations I think many researchers have made some researches of this so these are the current forces of the obstructions for further development of the EU-China relations so let's get the conclusion we know that we know that when the couple gets married they will never really imagine what will be the future of their marriage perhaps just after period of time these couples after period of time this couple might just gradually alienated from each other when they find some differences they will so you know that the love has never been a lasting thing when the love goes seen there will be some disputes I think the same situation is for the EU-China relations there will be obviously coexistence of the disputes and the pushing forces so that's okay so anyway I think that in the future there are some forces pushing China and the EU together and there are some forces pushing China and the EU far apart but I think that the pushing forces will be larger than the pulling forces there will be coexistence of disputes quarrels and the coordination okay thank you