Reconfiguring EU-China Climate Relationship: A New Answer to The EU’s Role in Global Climate Governance?

Based on interviews with European and Chinese climate negotiators and a further in-depth reading of policies, this article examines the EU’s role in global climate governance over the past decade. This article argues that the EU’s reconfiguration of its climate relationship with China facilitated the formation of a new mode of EU-China engagement in global climate governance. This new mode not only contributes to strengthening the EU’s leadership role in global climate governance but also promotes the EU’s overall management on its complicated relations with China in approaching global affairs. This article follows a three-step approach: it starts from introducing the EU’s climate leadership and normative power identity construction. Then it focuses on unfolding the EU’s reconfiguration of its climate relations with China over the past decade. It particularly examines that how the EU reconfigured its climate engagement with China bilaterally and multilaterally and how the EU re-constructed its normative power identity within this reconfiguration. Finally, this article evaluates the implication of this reconfiguration and concludes why the EU’s reconfiguration of its climate relations with China offers a new insight and answer to the EU’s role in global climate governance and global affairs in general.