The EU’s China strategy, while avoiding Trump-style confrontation, puts European unity to the test

While it won’t challenge China as Trump has done, the grouping wants to address its concerns over some Chinese policies through a united front. Italy’s lone endorsement of the belt and road shows the challenge it now faces

Emanuele Scimia

Published: 11:00pm, 27 Mar 2019

Why you can trust SCMP

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker sounded a conciliatory tone on Tuesday during a joint meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Paris.

The EU is ready to cooperate with China on many fronts, especially on promoting multilateralism, which is being challenged by US President Donald Trump’s trade protectionism and erratic diplomacy.

But European leaders also noted that the “strategic” cooperation between the bloc and China was unbalanced because of the latter’s market-distorting practices, and needed to be recalibrated. Significantly, Juncker said last week that Sino-European relations were “good, but not excellent”.

The EU, pushed by France and Germany, wants more reciprocity in its trade and investment engagement with China. This view reflects the conclusions of last Friday’s meeting of the European Council, which discussed ways to revise the bloc’s strategy towards Beijing, as well as a 10-point document on the issue that the EU Commission released on March 12.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (left), French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on Tuesday. Photo: Reuters

The European grouping, which is China’s largest trading partner, is already trying to rebalance relations with the Asian giant.

It has introduced measures to prevent dumped and subsidised Chinese goods from inundating the European market, while an EU-wide system to screen inbound foreign direct investments, which is clearly aimed at China, will enter into force in April.

The union is also considering a mechanism to force the Chinese to grant reciprocal access to their market, especially on public procurement tenders.

The opacity of the “Belt and Road Initiative”, Xi’s signature plan to improve connectivity and trade integration across Eurasia and beyond, is of concern to Europe as well.

Why Beijing is on a mission to quell Europe’s fears about China

EU institutions and some member countries argue that the belt and road project is not in compliance with European standards on investment financing, labour and environmental protection, also lamenting the excessive role of Chinese state-owned companies in it.

In this respect, major EU countries and the United States have criticised Italy’s decision to formally endorse the belt and road scheme. During Xi’s official visit to Rome from March 21-23, the Italian government signed a memorandum of understanding to be part of China’s New Silk Road strategy.

Western powers warned that China’s activities and presence in Italian seaports might jeopardise their security interests, as well as those of the EU and Nato. These concerns extended to possible Chinese investments in Italy’s critical technologies, including next-generation mobile networks.

It should be noted that European institutions are exploring options to deal with the security threat posed by the use of Huawei’s technology in developing European 5G communications platforms.

For the EU Commission, Italy’s uncoordinated approach has undermined the bloc’s attempt to present a united European front on China, which is now regarded by the union as an “economic competitor” and “systemic rival”.

The EU has raised the problem of Beijing’s close ties with other European countries, especially those in southern and eastern Europe that are struggling with economic instability and investment shortfalls, and have aligned themselves with China's agenda in some cases, even sabotaging the EU’s initiatives to tackle controversial Chinese policies.

Europe shouldn’t naively fall for US hype against China

All that said, European leaders made it clear to Xi that the grouping did not want to confront China in a Trump-style way. Europe’s soft attitude towards security issues related to China is symptomatic of its unwillingness to ratchet up the tension with the Chinese.

In the March 12 strategic paper outlining changes to its China policy, the European Union said that Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea affected the international legal order and, accordingly, the security of sea routes vital to Europe’s economic interests.

Furthermore, the document emphasised that China’s growing military capabilities, along with its ambition to have the technologically most-advanced armed forces by 2050, presented security challenges for the EU “already in a short- to mid-term perspective”.

In March last year, in an interview with an Australian newspaper, the EU’s then head of security policy, Francois Rivasseau, did not rule out the possibility of European patrol operations in the contested Southeast Asian waters.

But possibility is one thing. The reality is another.

When asked if the union was considering freedom of navigation operations in the disputed South China Sea, while rethinking its response to China’s growing power, an EU spokesperson told me that “both in terms of competence and capacity, any freedom of navigation patrols would be [a matter] for EU member states”.

Europe’s ‘end of naivety’ of China is overdue, for a different reason

That means the French navy (and perhaps the Royal Navy, if Brexit fails) will continue to operate in East Asia without the formal and practical support of the EU. France’s only aircraft carrier, the nuclear-powered Charles De Gaulle, will be deployed in the Indo-Pacific region in the coming months.

Unity is always hard to build within the EU, notably when it comes to security and military affairs. The Chinese leadership knows it very well, in as much as it still has room to play “divide and rule” in Europe – despite Xi’s saying that a united EU is a key plank of the multipolar world that he envisions.

Next month’s China-EU summit will help us understand if the new European strategy on China has strength or is simply bureaucratic wording with no substance.

Emanuele Scimia is an independent journalist and foreign affairs analyst

Post