EU-China Economic Relations: Interactions and Barriers

EU-China economic interactions became more and more frequent in the past decades, nowadays EU and China are main trade partner for each other. This paper analyzed EU-China economic interactions from three dimensions: bilateral governmental interactions, trade and investment flows as well as barriers to trade and investment. Findings show that EU-China close relationship is particularly based on goods trade especially on intra-industrial trade of manufacturing industrial products, and trade imbalance is arising from trade in Machinery and Transport Equipment and Other Manufactured Goods (e.g., Clothing and clothing accessories); This paper also found that there exist a myriad of trade and investment barriers to EU-China interactions, including both tariff and non-tariff obstacles. Therefore, this paper argued that if EU and China want to handle the trade imbalance efficiently, they must improve composition of trade in goods, while essentially, it requires lessening or eliminating EU-China trade barriers which hampered trade composition improvement.