Comparing Chinese and EU trade agreement strategies: lessons for normative power Europe?

This article compares the EU and China’s approaches to negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs). We show how China’s approach is more gradualist with regards to coverage of issues, and argue that this gives China advantages, which it leverages in later deals. While there are important differences in the scope and approach of EU trade negotiations, we argue that the EU could gain similar advantages by incorporating more Chinese-style gradualism to how it negotiates FTAs. Paradoxically, we argue that mirroring Chinese strategy in this regard could be used by the EU to secure very different ends from China’s such as normative reforms in the areas of human rights, the rule of law, and democratic government. More gradualism would allow the EU to scale up trade cooperation and regulatory convergence in an incremental manner while autocratic partner countries make democratic reforms, and would also enlarge the scope of more coherent positive conditionality.