Promising start for new partnership era with the EU

After spending two years getting to understand each other's respective positions, the leaderships of China and the European Union are determined to seek synergies in each other's mega-projects, Beijing and London have pledged to form a global strategic partnership and, Beijing and Paris worked together to reach a historic deal on climate change.

Amid the global economic downturn, these developments have deepened China's ties with the EU, building the momentum for both to work on the most difficult part of their collaboration, that is, implementation.

In addition to a variety of diplomatic moves, China is likely to make more efforts and inject more resources in the economy to ensure 2016 turns out to be a better year, especially because next year marks the beginning of its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period. With many strategic blueprints in hand, China should make every effort to make 2016 the beginning of a new and more fruitful era of its partnership with the EU by implementing its plans at different levels.