How China’s European diplomatic blizzard can whip up concrete results

Name: Xi Jinping’s visit to Europe: from belt and road plan to US$35 billion jet deal
Uploaded: 2020-09-06T14:30:14.000Z
Duration: 1 min 41 s
Description: Xi Jinping’s visit to Europe: from belt and road plan to US$35 billion jet deal

The flurry of top-level Chinese diplomacy in Europe comes after months of US efforts to create a strong transatlantic front against China

Given that Europe is more willing than the US to accept China as a ‘difficult’ partner, Beijing must go beyond platitudes during this crucial window

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Norway’s Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide (right) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi greet each other with an elbow bump in Oslo on August 27. Photo: EPA-EFE

David Dodwell

Published: 10:30pm, 6 Sep 2020Updated: 10:59pm, 6 Sep 2020

Almost exactly two years ago, as economic relations between China and the US were poised to fall over a cliff, I imagined an internal memo to Chinese President Xi Jinping from the country’s lead trade negotiator Liu He.

With US Congressional and Senate elections just six weeks away at the time, and consuming most of the US media and political attention, I called on Xi to change tack and capture a rare and valuable window to mend long-neglected fences in other parts of the world. I noted that US President Donald Trump’s unilateral bellicosity, and abandonment of the norms of civilised diplomatic behaviour, had provided Beijing with a unique opportunity to put substantial flesh on its oral commitments to bolster multilateral cooperation and to build some much-needed trust on the world stage.

By targeting Japan, at the heart of the newly-established Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, there was potential to forge trade and investment agreements – and commitments to rely on multilateral institutions as the basis for international diplomacy and deal-making – with a colossal 40-plus economy grouping that would account for a massive share of the global economy.

Needless to say, the counsel in that memo went unnoticed and unheeded. Many European trading partners still complain of diplomatic neglect. Worse, China’s increasingly muscular activity in the South China Sea and heavy-handed treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang, combined with its tardiness in opening its domestic markets to international companies and the massive international expansion of infrastructure projects under its Belt and Road Initiative, continue to jangle nerves in countries that remain wary about the rise of Chinese economic power and ambition.

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Xi Jinping’s visit to Europe: from belt and road plan to US$35 billion jet deal

But here we are, two years later, and the window of opportunity has once again opened wide, with perhaps one last chance for China to reassert the imperative for multilateralism and build a pivotal role for itself at the heart of international economic cooperation, before the US presidential elections in November.