The recent state visits by President Hu Jintao to the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain are the latest steps in a continuing effort by the Chinese government and its European counterparts to strengthen their ties, but they also demonstrate some of the contradictions China faces in dealing with Europe and its constituent member states.
Both the European Union and China have described their relationship as strategic, although sometimes this seems no more than a hyperbolic way of saying each considers the other important. It is perhaps true that the relationship is more strategic for China than the EU. The promotion of multipolarity is one of the key foreign policy aims of the Chinese government, and the EU is a crucial element in the policy.