TRANSATLANTIC RESOLVE ON BEIJING SHORT-LIVED
Bloc’s top diplomat says members do not want to be forced to choose either China or United States, ahead of key European meetings with both rivals
In the weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, after combining to deliver a lightning-fast blitz of sanctions, European and American officials spoke glowingly of a silver lining: the war had brought them closer together than they had been in years.
At the same time, mutual invective was directed towards Beijing, which refused to condemn the February invasion and in the weeks leading up to it, declared a friendship with Russia that had “no limits”.
For many, the expectation was that this new Europe would move closer to Washington’s more hawkish China policy. As recently as last month, European Union leaders agreed that China was now more of a competitor than a partner, and that the bloc as a whole needed to reduce its reliance on the country’s economy.
But in recent weeks, the transatlantic bonhomie has worn off.
European governments have been taking potshots at US economic and China policy, while its leaders have been scrambling to meet President Xi Jinping after his return to face-to-face diplomacy.
“We’ve tipped into a new globalisation,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said last week of the US Inflation Reduction Act, a huge package of industrial subsidies that threatens to lure European companies to the United States and has raised the spectre of a transatlantic trade war.
“China tipped into this globalisation a long time ago with massive state aid exclusively reserved for Chinese products,” he said. “Right before our eyes, the US has tipped into this new globalisation to develop its industrial capacity on US soil.”
The Netherlands – home to hi-tech microchip machinery maker ASML – is outraged at US efforts to force it to stop selling equipment to China and “will not copy the American measures one to one”, Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher told Dutch newspaper NRC last month. “We make our own assessment – and we do this in consultation with partner countries such as Japan and the US,” she said.
It is within this fluid geopolitical context that European Council President Charles Michel touches down in Beijing for meetings today with China’s top leadership, including Xi.
Just hours later, the EU’s No 2 foreign policy official, Stefano Sannino, will hold biannual talks on China with US counterpart Wendy Sherman in Washington.
On Tuesday, at the Brussels Indo-Pacific Forum, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, laid out his vision of European autonomy in an increasingly polarised world.
“We must be clear on the EU’s position, defending our own views and interests,” he said. “But we are not equidistant … politically, we share a political system with the US of democracy, accountability, individual rights and open markets. China, in the meantime, is hardening its foreign policy and there is a greater ideological component overall.
“The truth is also that a vast majority of Indo-Pacific and European countries do not want to be trapped into an impossible choice,” Borrell said. “They don’t want to have to choose either the US or China. We, like them, don’t want a world that is split into two camps.”
The US had expressed mild bemusement at the rush of EU leaders to Beijing, particularly German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to travel with a business delegation last month, the senior EU official said. French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are set to follow next year.
At the Brussels forum on Tuesday, David Helvey, a senior adviser to the US mission to Nato, said discussions with China should not be “engagement for the sake of engagement”.
“You have to use those engagements to speak clearly about your views and positions, areas where we see China not complying with the rules, areas where we have concerns, whether it’s human rights or economic issues, unfair trade practices,” he added.
Senior EU officials defended the diplomatic outreach, and said Michel would raise all of those issues with Xi as well as Premier Li Keqiang.
“President Xi is not necessarily going to get a broad range of opinions from those closest to him. Therefore, our leaders speaking frankly, behind closed doors, is even more important now than ever before,” said Richard Tibbels, the EU’s special envoy for Asia.
Michel is, however, under some pressure from EU diplomats and lawmakers to raise the recent wave of protests in China over the zero-Covid policy with Xi. Some protesters have called for the president to step down.
A senior Western European diplomat said that if Michel did not raise the thorniest of issues, he would be seen as “nothing but a tool for Chinese propaganda”.
“With no clear aims and no foreseeable results you wonder why he is travelling at all, other than his own personality cult,” the diplomat added.
[EU and Chinese] leaders speaking frankly … is even more important now than … before
RICHARD TIBBELS, E.U. SPECIAL ENVOY