Europe-US resolve on China proves short-lived ahead of key meetings in Beijing and Washington
- Most EU countries ‘don’t want to have to choose’ and ‘don’t want a world that is split into two camps’, says the bloc’s top diplomat
- European governments have criticised Washington’s economic and China policies, and its leaders are scrambling to meet with President Xi Jinping
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 geopolitical Europe would move closer to Washington’s more hawkish China policy. As recently as last month, EU 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 Chinese economy.
But in recent weeks, the transatlantic bonhomie has worn off.
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European governments have been taking potshots at US economic and China policy, while its leaders have been scrambling to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping after the end to his near three-year absence from face-to-face diplomacy.
On Thursday, two meetings held 14,500km (9,000 miles) apart may help reveal whether their differences preclude deeper cooperation on China.
“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 America, and which has raised the spectre of a new 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.”
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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 said this month in an interview with Dutch newspaper NRC.
“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 on Thursday 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 EU, however, does not want to be forced to pick a side.
“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.”
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Brussels officials confirmed that the US continues to squeeze them to take a harder line on China.
“Let’s say the US has a certain tendency to be more prescriptive not just about China, but about everything else too – that is the prerogative of leading world powers,” said a senior EU official, who was hopeful that the subsidies row would not overshadow all other areas of cooperation.
Mathilde Velliet, a research fellow covering US foreign policy at the Institute of French International Relations, said there were “conflicting trends in Europe”, which makes the dynamic difficult to read.
“The recent, or incoming, visits of German and EU leaders have obviously drawn a lot of attention, as well as the understandable pushback from European officials against the extraterritorial application of US recent controls and the American desire to strong-arm allies into adopting the same policies towards China,” Velliet said.
These actions jar with recent rhetoric on Beijing becoming a systemic competitor for Europe, and the need to reduce the EU’s reliance on China for critical supplies. But the dichotomy “does expand space for cooperation”, said Velliet.
The US has expressed mild bemusement at the rush of EU leaders to Beijing, particularly German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to travel with a business delegation this 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 engagement 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.
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Senior EU officials defended the diplomatic outreach, and said Michel would raise all of those issues with Xi, as well as Premier Li Keqiang and Chinese Speaker Li Zhanshu.
“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 the Indo-Pacific.
The senior EU official added that it was more important to talk to those you disagree with than those with whom you are mostly on the same page. “I never thought that if you are talking to someone it means you are losing your virginity,” the official said.
Michel is, however, under some pressure from EU diplomats and lawmakers to raise the recent wave of protests in China with Xi. People took to the streets of major Chinese cities over the weekend to call for an end to the country’s strict zero-Covid strategy.
In Shanghai, some chanted slogans criticising the Communist Party while others held up blank sheets of paper – a symbol of anger against restrictions on speech. Video footage shows some protesters even demanding Xi step down.
“I fully expect Charles Michel to raise the issue of the recent protests in the PRC as part of a broader human rights agenda. Failure to do so would question the whole purpose and necessity of the visit,” said Miriam Lexmann, a European Parliament member sanctioned by China last year.
A senior Western European diplomat said that the “space for engagement” was minimal and that if Michel did not raise the thorniest of issues, he will 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.
