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Letters | For the EU to connect with Asia, it must learn the ‘Asian way’ of doing business

  • The European Commission proposal does not talk about building ties based on business
  • European policy talks about pushing Asia to adopt rules and the Western way of doing things

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Containers are loaded onto a China-Europe freight train in Zhengzhou city, in China’s Henan province, in August 2017. Asia accounts for 35 per cent of EU exports and 45 per cent of EU imports. Photo: EPA-EFE
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In September, the European Commission and the European High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy released a joint communication regarding a “vision for a new and comprehensive strategy to better connect Europe and Asia”.
The motivations behind this move are easy to spot. As the connectivity strategy notes, Asia represents 60 per cent of the world’s population and accounts for 35 per cent of EU exports (€618 billion) and 45 per cent of the EU imports (€774 billion). Plus, the region might require over €1.3 trillion per year for infrastructure development to sustain its current economic pace (against €1.5 trillion in Europe between 2021 and 2030).

Yet, things do not add up. On the one hand, a press release illustrates a major connectivity potential with a practical, promising and exciting map. On the other hand, the policy proposal itself does not convey the message it is supposed to convey.

The European Commission does not talk about building ties based on business, it does not look for shared interests and does not think in terms of pragmatic mutual interests.

Instead, the commission talks about applying the EU model of rules-based institutions and mindsets to Asia. European institutions see connectivity as a matter of promoting market access principles and insist on making Asia “adhere to high standards of transparency and good governance”. In short, European policy talks about pushing Asia to adopt rules and the Western way of doing things, which leads to an important question: how can we bridge the gap?

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