China’s significance on the world scene justifies EU’s efforts to extend and diversify its relationship to the People’s Republic beyond the initial trade connections and to carry out its important economic and political interests as supporting China’s sustainable development and transition to a ‘stable’, ‘prosperous’ and ‘open’ state.
This paper is concerned with the European Union’s (EU) development cooperation with China, as regards to the ‘cooperation for establishing civil society capacity’ with the People’s Republic. The initially stipulated EU’s willingness to aid China’s societal sector through allocated funding does not meet with the realization of this intention. The aims of cooperation: increasing of Chinese civil society organizations’ (CSOs) experience in project and organization management, reiterating networking and mutual understanding between Chinese and European CSOs, successful completion of pilot programs and participation in macro-project schemes, etc.; are lined with € 20 million, when the cooperation was to start off in 2002. However, due to implementation deficiencies, it became apparent that the aid cannot be fully absorbed and would remain unrealized assets. This triggered alteration in terms of objectives, activities, implementation, expected results and financial envelope; altogether, changing the manner the cooperation in the field was carried out.
Hence, the latest relevant EU papers evidence of transforming the ‘cooperation for establishing civil society capacity’ from ‘priority area’ to ‘complementary activity’ to EU-China relationship. Regardless of whether this could be defined as failure, or hesitantly as ‘shift of focus’, this change is due to certain causality that has implications both on the ongoing process of cooperation and on the its prospects.