What’s in a name? A rough guide to China’s elaborate labeling of bilateral relations in Europe

As EU-China relations deteriorate, maintaining “comprehensive strategic partnerships” and other friendly-sounding ties looks increasingly incongruous, say Eva Seiwert and Claus Soong. 

Xi Jinping's visits to Hungary and Serbia in May 2024 saw Beijing upgrade the designation of its relations with the two China-friendly European states. Budapest was elevated from having a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with China to having an “all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership for the new era,” a term indicating a particularly close and resilient relationship in Beijing’s diplomatic lexicon. Meanwhile, Belgrade's status was upgraded from a “strategic partnership” to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” and flanked with the creation of a “China-Serbia Community of Common Destiny,” the first of its kind in Europe.

China has since the end of the Cold War created a particularly elaborate system of labeling bilateral relations. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it highlights Beijing’s good rapport with other countries true to “the principle of non-alignment” – by implication distinguishing it from allegedly more aligned “partnership” approaches, like that of the US. China established its first “strategic partnership” with Brazil in 1993, signed a “strategic partnership of coordination for the 21st century” with Russia in 1996 and had 110 “strategic partnerships” by 2023 – over 40 of those being the slightly grander “comprehensive strategic partnerships.”

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China has coined bespoke labels to emphasize the uniqueness of relations with certain countries

China divides its bilateral relations into roughly four tiers: “comprehensive strategic partnerships,” which are the highest form and indicate cooperation in several areas (often economic, technological, political and military); “strategic partnerships”, which also indicate close relations (although not in as many fields); more general “partnerships”; and lastly “friendly and cooperative relations”. It has also coined bespoke labels to emphasize the uniqueness of relations with certain countries – such as a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era” (新时代全面战略协作伙伴关系) with Russia and an “all-round, high-quality, future-oriented partnership” (全方位高质量的前瞻性伙伴关系) with Singapore.

In the European Union, Beijing has bestowed “comprehensive strategic partnerships” on nine countries plus the EU itself – although it has also slightly elevated Hungary and Germany within this grouping by describing relations in a slightly different way: Hungary has since May been in an “all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership” (新时代全天候全面战略伙伴关系) with Beijing, while Germany uniquely enjoys an “all-round strategic partnership” (全方位战略伙伴关系), a subtly upgraded version of the “comprehensive strategic partnership” enjoyed by the governments of Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

Some European “comprehensive strategic partners” have begun to see China more as a strategic rival

14 EU member states enjoy only a “strategic partnership” with China, although some countries may have opted for this lower rank, rather than being assigned it by Beijing. For example, the Netherlands and Ireland have long been major suppliers of advanced Western semiconductors to China, yet relations with these key trading partners are categorized only as “strategic partnerships”. This suggests the Irish and the Dutch may have lacked the appetite for a more ostentatious upgrade when Beijing re-labelled both sets of relations a decade ago.

This is a reminder that any Chinese label for bilateral relations is not simply bestowed by Beijing – it must also be accepted by the other country involved. Several of China’s European “comprehensive strategic partners” have recently begun to see the Chinese government more as a strategic rival and competitor, and less as the close partner of ten or twenty years ago. At a time of very different stances towards Russia and its war on Ukraine, and to electric-vehicle tariffs and fair market access, certainly the first-tier partnership labels of nine EU member states as well as the European Union as a whole appear increasingly outdated.

Given that China’s partnership labels are more about symbolism than substance, the question is whether the EU governments should rethink at least their top-level partnerships with Beijing. Take Brussels itself: The EU-China “comprehensive strategic partnership” of 2003 was the first of its kind in Europe, but Covid-19, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the US-China rivalry have since altered the international geopolitical landscape. Despite its first-tier partnership with Brussels, Beijing never seemed to take European concerns about any of these issues seriously.

Could threatening to downgrade the partnership status force Beijing to take European concerns more seriously?

There is no precedent for China downgrading its partnerships – or having its partnerships downgraded. Beijing is, for example, still officially bound by a “comprehensive strategic cooperative relationship” with the Philippines and a “strategic cooperative partnership” with India despite its strained relations with both. But this fact could make any mooted downgrade all the more powerful. It could, for example, give Brussels badly needed leverage in its attempts to get China to minimize its considerable indirect support for Russia’s war against Ukraine. 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has repeatedly told Xi Jinping that Russia’s war on Ukraine was an “existential threat” to Europe and warned that China-Russia relations will affect Europe’s relations with China. Given Europe’s limited options for trying to influence Beijing, threatening to downgrade the EU-China partnership could be the kind of thunderbolt that jolts Beijing into taking European concerns more seriously. After all, international legitimacy matters to Beijing – it wants to be seen as a reliable and important actor on the world stage. 

But it is unlikely that EU member states could ever agree on such a move. Some would probably see such an unprecedented downgrade as an unnecessary provocation at a time of great uncertainty for the world. For example, if Donald Trump were to be re-elected to the White House in November, the EU would have to prepare for a more difficult relationship with the US. In this context, it could ultimately be self-defeating for the EU to downgrade a partnership that EU governments would agree is little more than symbolism. After all, what’s in a name?