Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-481"
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"en.20080422.54.2-481"2
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"Madam President, I congratulate my colleague, Ms Gomes, on an excellent report. This report strengthens our relationship with China, which is necessary to underpin the global economy. Until recently, and for thousands of years, China only exercised soft power, as we now do in the EU, but China is changing. She is a superpower, both economically and militarily, and she is in transition.
Our relationship with China must be based on respect. It cannot be a relationship where either party feels entitled to lecture or hector the other. We ended the Cold War by engaging with the Soviet Union and we brought peace to Europe. Similarly, we must engage with China at all levels. We must preserve the institutions that underpin our rules-based global liberal economy and values, otherwise we are finished.
This means China playing a full and active role in all the post-war Bretton Woods institutions that we have so carefully built. It also means working with China to strengthen the rules of the international order so that it serves our interest and hers. By 2020, China’s economy will be the largest in the world. We now have a choice. Either we empower China to play a full and active role in the liberal open-to-all rules-based multilateral institutions built after Bretton Woods – and this includes the EU, the ACP, Rio, Bali, in addition to the UN, WTO, IMF and the World Bank – or, we force China, through our short-termism, to withdraw and inevitably, in time, to destroy these institutions and build her own, to suit her superpowers, institutions.
That is why this report is so timely. That is also why – and I am being controversial here – the Olympic Games in Beijing are so important, because this is the first time in history that China is engaging with the whole world. That is why it must be a great success, not only for China, but for the whole participating world.
Our task at the beginning of the 21st century is an enormous one. It has never been done before in the entirety of our common human history, but it must be done. That task is to engage the oldest and largest nation on earth in all the affairs of the planet Earth as our partner."@en1
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