("Contraddizioni". Photo by Valeria Venturini)

"Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world". (Napoleon)

EU-China's relationship hold an important role in global affairs and international relations particularly for what concern economical issues. Popular Republic of China (REP) has had the fastest economical growth for the past 30 years and is nowadays the third largest economy in the world, after USA and EU, before Japan. On 21st October 2009 the EU Aid Programme has allocated over 128 million Euros to the PRC, based on comparison-dialogue between them, around their bilateral relations in trade, business, economic development, climate changes, environment, energy, and human resources. The non-profit programme, called "MEPT" (Manager Exchange and Training Programme), has been developed by the European Commission to carry on goals established in 1985 by the EU-China Trade and Cooperation Agreement. The principal problem, being China the first and largest EU trade partner, become the discussion around the respect of human rights, which are actually undervalued, also because of the global crisis. On 20th November 2009 took place in Bejing the 28th round of the EU-China Dialogue on Human Rights. "By Doing so"-said Chinese President Hu Jintao- "we will build the China-EU relationship as a paradigm of how countries pursuing different social system and different development can get along well and seek common prosperity"; Hu Jintao also underlined the importance of this annual summit, and the priority given to the relationship with Europe; in spite of this, the discussion around Human Rights is a still open problem, and meetings seems to be more based on economical rather then social issues. Again on 1st December 2009 the European Commission held a hearing in Brussels, to discuss about Human Rights in China: through the words of Chairwoman Heidi Hautala, expressed the EU Parliament wishes and matters of concern about citizens political and civil rights in China, penalty death, minorities's rights, freedom of speech and press, torture, and the judicial system's indipendence, without interferences from the government; other members of the Parliament criticized Chinese communist regime for the treatment reserved to ethnic and religious minorities, particularly in Tibet and Xinjiang. Freedom of speech, ratified in the article 35 of the Chinese Constitution of 1982, doesn't have nothing more than a partial application, being expressed in the "General Principles" that is not permitted any sabotage and opposition to the Socialist system: most of the Media belong to government, who can take advantage of them to order a "truth regime" congruent with the Communist Party's rules, with an intense monitoring that has to be accepted without flinch, considering permissible the right to imprison who act critically against the government. Especially towards Web, some foreign Internet search engines, such as Micorsoft Live Search, Skype, Yahoo, or Google are perpetually monitored; this so-called "Chinese Firewall" gives to the government the opportunity to ban offensive instant messages. About political freedom, PRC is known for its proverbial intolerance: dissident groups are regularly arrested and jailed, often for a long period and in lack of a regular trial; widely known also cases of torture to extort forced confessions. According to the United Nation Secretary-General, between 1994 and 1999, China has been placed seventh for the number of executions, after Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Sierra Leone, Kyrgystan and Jordan. Amnesty International claims that official figures are much smaller than the real number, bearing in mind than statistics are considered State secrets: even if figures from 2007 seem to register an essential reduction of the executions (just 470 compared with the previous), however Amnesty International claims that this number embrace just confirmed figures from authorities, and in addiction to this we should consider also an high number of intimidating actions from chinese civil servants against who try to interfere with them. In the meantime PRC published a 54 pages document called: "National Human Rights plan of China" (2009-2010) which defines action lines for the safeguard of social, cultural, economical rights, also through ethnic minorities, women, children and elderly people; the document, a sort of a Constitutional Manifesto about China's future behaviour, would be a first concrete assurance through the necessity of a proper development based on the idea of Constitutional State and Human Rights'respect, which are EU's political priorities.