China's Role: Trades Issues

CHINA’S ROLE

Trades Issues

China is one of the world’s largest economies and an important trading partner for the EU. It’s also one of the biggest traders in the world, it is now the EU’s second trading partner behind the United States and the EU is China’s biggest trading partner.

It’s being said that the EU is now committed to start trading relations with China. However, China needs to ensure to trades fairly, respects intellectual property rights and meets its WTO obligations.

It’s well known that China is placed in a good position talking about trades, but this doesn’t mean that China is going to settle for this. This country has many possibilities to continue expanding their connections around the world, but of course there are always boundaries that are there to be crossed.

One of these opportunities it’s the one mentioned before with the UE. So in order to open these doors with the UE, China wants to propose to support the national security, transparency and sustainable trade. These with the hope of demonstrate that China is committed to conduct business responsibly.

Environmental Degradation

The cost of environmental degradation in China was about $230 billion in 2010, three times that in 2004. This is based on costs arising from pollution and damage to the ecosystem and it is a high price that China is paying for its rapid industrialization.

China is looking forward to transform from the explosive growth of the past 30 years to the sustainable growth of the next 30 years. This past January, outrage bailed over as air pollution in north China reached record levels; there have also been constant concerns over water and soil solution. This doesn’t mean that China is letting this issue on its own; China may be the world’s worst polluter but largest investor in green energy. Its rise will have as big an impact on environment as on the world economy or politics.

It is very clear that China needs to solve this as fast as it can be. The proposal to the other actors is to minimize the impact on the environment by reducing pollution and contributing with other countries by financing a research in order to find a solution to reduce the bad impact on the environment.

Human Rights

Human rights is a difficult subject to China, the government censors the press, the internet, print publications, and academic research, and justifies human rights abuses as necessary to preserve the “social stability”. This results in angry citizens ready to challenge authorities, official and scholarly statistics, based on law enforcement reports, suggest there are 300-400 protests each day.