US-China antagonisms worry nations around globe

BEIJING – Antagonisms between the United States and China are worrying governments around the world, prompting a German official to warn of “Cold War 2.0” and Kenya’s president to appeal for unity to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Global trade already was depressed by the 2-year-old tariff war between the world’s two biggest economies. That rancor has spread to include Hong Kong, Chinese Muslims, spying accusations and control of the South China Sea.

Caught in the middle, other governments are trying to defend their own interests.

● Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government wants to preserve trade and cooperation on global warming but says a security law tightening Beijing’s control over Hong Kong is a “difficult issue.”

The Hong Kong security law’s potential disruption of the autonomy Beijing promised to the former British colony is no reason to stop talking but is “a worrying development,” Merkel said.

Europe’s biggest economy has yet to take a final position on Chinese tech giant Huawei despite U.S. pressure to exclude its equipment from next-generation telecom networks as a possible security risk.

“China is an important partner for us but also a competitor,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said after a videoconference Friday with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.

Peter Beyer, the government’s coordinator for trans-Atlantic cooperation, expressed alarm in an interview with the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland newspaper group.

“We are experiencing the beginning of a Cold War 2.0,” Beyer said. He criticized both sides but said, “the U.S. is our most important partner outside the EU, and that is how it will stay.”

France: President Emmanuel Macron calls President Donald Trump “my friend” but is trying to avoid riling Beijing.

France has not echoed Trump’s criticism of Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus, but legislators applauded Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian last week when he condemned abuses of minority Uighurs in China’s northwest.

Trump’s ambivalence toward U.S. allies and flouting of diplomatic norms has alarmed France.

“Sino-American tensions don’t benefit France,” said Valerie Niquet of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a think tank. “We share the same interests as the United States towards China, we adopt more or less the same positions, so it doesn’t bring us any positive element.”

Europe: Europe’s “strategic relations” with China will be an issue for the European Union while Germany holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc, Merkel said this month.

EU foreign ministers have not managed to agree on a common position on China.

Regarding Hong Kong, options include closer scrutiny of exports of sensitive technology to the territory and changing visa policies for its residents. But there is no talk of economic sanctions or targeting Chinese officials with penalties.

“The message is that the recent actions change the rules,” said the top EU foreign policy official, Josep Borrell. “This will require a revision of our approach and will clearly have an impact on our relations.”

South Korea: South Korea is squeezed between its main military ally and its biggest trading partner.

In 2016, Beijing destroyed supermarket operator Lotte’s business in China after the conglomerate sold a plot of land in South Korea to the government for an anti-missile system over Chinese objections.

Washington is unhappy with South Korea’s desire to ease sanctions on North Korea to encourage disarmament and uneasy about its use of Huawei technology.

Trump complains about the cost of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops in South

Korea to protect against North Korean threats. A cost-sharing agreement expired in 2019 without a replacement.

The U.S.-Chinese row “has thrown a question to South Korea” about which side to choose, the newspaper Dong-A Ilbo said in an editorial Monday.

“Sooner or later we will be forced to provide an answer, no matter how hard we tried to avoid it,” the newspaper said.

Africa: China-U.S. tensions are taking a toll. The African Development Bank said last year trade disruption due to the tariff war could lead to a 2.5% drop in economic output for some African countries.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said political disputes should be set aside to better fight the coronavirus.

“Let’s not be sucked back into isolationism or unilateralism. We need each other today more than ever,” Kenyatta said an Atlantic Council event last month. “We’re not going to fight coronavirus if one country fails and another succeeds.”