EU's Strategy in its Trilateral Relationships with China and the US - China's Accession to the WTO

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China's accession to the WTO was perceived as the West integrating the East into the international economy with market economy reforming the planned economy. The major actors, the United States (US) and the Euorpean Union (EU), with similar economic structures and ideologies were expected to cooperate and bargain the best offers from China. However, while the US adopted a confrontational approach, the EU was cooperational and constructive. The aim of this thesis is to explain why the EU behaved differently and how such move gives us hints about the future global economic structure and the corresponding interactions between actors. Realism perspective is used to analyse the EU's strategy in this trilateral relationships. I argue the EU started to perceive the US as a potential threat due to the US's dominance and aggressive intentions reflected by its practice of using economic sanctions for political objectives. Meanwhile, China was growing as a trade power. Under this changing power structure, China's accession came as an opportunity for both the US and the EU to influence the process. The EU, in order to balance and to contain its dependence on the US, chose to build partnership with China and to aggregate their economic capabilities, working as soft balancing. This case study is largely based on the official reports published by the European Commission in 1995 and 1998 and other secondary materials to support my theoretical arguments. In those reports, the EU explicitly stated that it had to make its own genuine European policy to China and considered building partnership with China was the only way to make its voices heard. ...