Affiliation: Ph.D. in History, professor of Internati onal relations and European studies at ”Lucian Blaga” at Sibiu University

Abstract: The world today is a mess, there is no doubt about it. But probably this is also how the contemporaries of other historical ti mes saw their present. We could rather say that the international order is difficult to predict at the beginning of a century which is already dominated by very confusing moves and combinations. Using the author’s own means of research and observation (field research, the perception of reality from the perspective of the study of history, and a compared dimension), this article wishes to shed some light on a part of the role played by the European Union in the international policy under the circumstances of the fast transformations suffered by the global economic and security environment. The strategic relation with China is worth discussing at several levels (depending on the various categories of interests); our considerations about the course of the strategic partnership between the two powers and about the current evolutions of the international scene try to provide only some necessary benchmarks for an overall understanding of this diplomatic closeness