Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

The subject of the study is economic relations between USA and China. The aim of the study is to characterize the dynamics of the world-system status of China in the XX-XXI centuries and the economic characteristics of its mode of production at present. The main idea of the article is to substantiate the untenability of considering the real state of the economic system of China as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Currently, China is integrated into the world-system according to the Beijing Consensus model. The model of China is a specific Asian capitalism, in which a special mode of capital accumulation is formed - with a higher role of the state in the process of capital accumulation than in the fourth cycle of capitalist accumulation. Its world-system status can be characterized as a strong semi-periphery, which entered the competition for hegemony in the next system cycle of capitalist accumulation. If the motion path leads China to the goal, it will be for the first time a specific non-Western hegemony. This research result allows determining the prospects for changing relations in the world economy as a result of the completion of the fourth system cycle of capitalist accumulation.

Strategic (Comprehensive) Partnership, as a general concept and also as a specific foreign policy instrument for developing the European Union’s relations with key world countries (strategic partners), involves not only equivalent, mutually beneficial and institutionalized cooperation in many areas but also a joint solution to strategic (security and defense) issues and issues of regional and global governance where parties not only cooperate but also share responsibility. The objective of this article is to analyze the legal instruments (criteria) of the EU-China Strategic Partnership and to compare its character with the general legal concept of the EU Strategic Partnership. Based on this analysis we will answer the question whether the EU-China Strategic Partnership shows evidence of unclarity, imperfection and elusiveness of the EU’s Strategic Partnership.