Bates Gill and Robin Niblett  question to what extent the EU's constructive engagement with PRC - through tools like the hugely symbolic Galielo constellation - is  adversely affecting trans-atlantic relations. EU-China cooperation on outer space is advancing at a rapid pace. China is establishing itself as the major non-Community partner in the development and deployment of the global Galileo navigation system. As we know from the recent 'bra wars' the EU has become China's leading trade partner, and China the second-largest destination in the world for EU exports.  The IHT is tracking the strains in the relations within the global troika - 'partnership paradoxes' - particularly during the intense negotiations that came to the surface around renewal of the EU's Tiananmen Arms Embargo. The embargo remains in place, but the developing  EU-China Framework Agreement is constantly strengthening scientific and technology cooperation; collaboration on migration issues; and  'global problem solving' approaches on climate change and energy supply security . .

U.S. policy makers are only now waking up to these developments. Instead, over the past year, U.S. attention on the EU-China relationship has focused almost exclusively on preventing EU governments from lifting their 1989 arms embargo against China.
 
Greater scrutiny of European trade with China in high-technology, defense-related and dual-use items is certainly warranted, and U.S. concerns have forcefully supported those in Europe who have advocated a more measured approach to military-technical relations with China. Moreover, with the shelving earlier this summer of EU plans to lift the embargo, EU officials and their U.S. counterparts have belatedly established a formal EU-U.S. dialogue on Asia and China.

The authors conclude that the EU and North America need to put as much effort into understanding each other's China engagement strategies as they do into pursuing their own interests in Beijing.