The dissertation is devoted to the complex analysis of tools and features of the strategic cooperation between Ukraine and China and their international legal regulation. The thesis reveals the theoretical and legal aspect of Ukrainian-Chinese bilateral relations and their normative consolidation.
It gives a comprehensive overview of the basic principles of strategic cooperation between Ukraine and China and a general description of the existing experience in certain areas, the determination of each party's interests and searches for «common ground», outlines prospects for further cooperation. Also promising directions for future collaboration are defined and general condition of relations between them is evaluated.
It can now be stated that the Chinese vector of Ukrainian foreign policy and international economic cooperation remains one of the most promising and controversial at the same time. In general, the main areas of bilateral cooperation are agriculture, military-technical cooperation, aerospace, energy, information technology, transport and infrastructure. International trade has asymmetric features. It is important to form a well-thought out strategy and plan for the development of bilateral economic cooperation. There are far fewer humanitarian issues, as both countries have stepped up their work on cultural exchange and educational projects in recent years. Scientific and technical cooperation between Ukraine and China remains effective. A thorough contractual framework provides these relations with a systematic and long-term nature with significant and practically inexhaustible prospects for further development.
Among the fundamental principles of such bilateral cooperation one can name the existence of fundamentally important goals, which can only be achieved if there is a serious long-term coordination of the parties' efforts and a common understanding of the goals and principles of the strategic partnership development by the parties. It is extremely important to have an up-to-date legal framework for partnership, which sets out the content of cooperation and mechanisms for its implementation, as well as the existence of established institutional mechanisms through which strategic partnership is implemented. The theoretical and methodological foundations of strategic partnership remain poorly investigated and require a thorough analysis of available experience and the development of universal guidelines to ensure the effective practical implementation of bilateral relations of strategic importance. On this path, one of the universal instruments to regulate such relations is "soft law", which eventually may entail certain "legal consequences". First of all, it can become the basis for a future document, which is a legally binding source of law, in addition, the rules of "soft law" are able to independently regulate public relations, supplementing the official source of law or filling its gaps. On the way to the practical content of Ukrainian-Chinese strategic cooperation in view of the comparative analysis of trends and legalization of similar relations between other states, it is worth paying attention to developing a contractual framework between Ukraine and China by signing different sectoral agreements.
The preconditions for the development of these relations, as well as the sources and mechanisms of their international legal regulation are analyzed. The state of the institutional and contractual mechanism is determined, as well as proposals for their improvement are provided.
