Be alert to the China challenge, EU’s Borrell tells G7 foreign ministers

Beijing poses strategic and ideological tests, including in the South China Sea, he says
Chinese and US leaders have strong domestic reasons to keep up the rhetoric next year, analyst says

China-EU relations

Shi Jiangtao

Published: 6:30pm, 12 Dec 2021

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The European Union’s top diplomat has branded China a “strategic and ideological challenge” as foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialised nations try to take a united stand against “malign behaviour” from Beijing and Moscow.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell made the remarks during the two-day gathering of top diplomats from the world’s richest nations in Liverpool, England, in their second in-person meeting of the year.

While the year-end meeting was dominated by Russia’s troop build-up on Ukraine’s border, China’s increasingly assertiveness, especially its challenge to Western democracies and fierce criticism of Washington’s Summit for Democracy, was also high on the agenda.

“China represents today a challenge, a strategic and ideological challenge,” Borrell said on Saturday. “[We] have to be vigilant, gathering our forces in order to ensure, for example, the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea where 40 per cent of the exports of the European Union pass by these waters.”

Opening the year-end meeting, British Foreign Minister Liz Truss called for a show of unity among democracies “to stand up to aggressors who are seeking to limit the bounds of freedom and democracy”, without naming any countries.

“To do this, we need to have a fully united voice. We need to expand our economic and security posture around the world,” she said.

02:25

Xi Jinping and Joe Biden call for mutual respect and peaceful China-US coexistence

Despite a temporary detente after the first US-China virtual summit last month, Beijing has mounted what observers described as unprecedented attacks against the administration of President Joe Biden in recent weeks, taking aim at Washington’s virtual democracy summit last week in particular.

Representatives from about 110 governments, mostly like-minded allies of the US, including Taiwan, attended the two-day virtual event hosted by Biden, rallying behind calls by the US to uphold democracy and human rights.

Apart from denouncing Biden’s pet project as trying to stoke Cold War-era ideological divides, China’s foreign ministry branded American democracy a “weapon of mass destruction”, citing unilateral sanctions and “colour revolutions” overseas.

In a Saturday meeting on the sidelines of the G7 gathering, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi agreed to strengthen their cooperation to counter China and North Korea.

“[It is] indispensable to bolster the deterrence and response capabilities of the alliance amid the increasingly harsh security environment,” the two officials were quoted by the Japanese foreign ministry as saying, according to Kyodo.

They repeated their strong opposition to China’s bid to alter the status quo by force in the East and South China seas and affirmed the importance of “peace and stability” across the Taiwan Strait, according to a Japanese official.

But they did not discuss whether Tokyo would follow Washington’s lead with a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics next year, Kyodo reported.

Blinken and Hayashi, who took up the post last month, also stressed the need to work with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) as well as like-minded nations such as Australia and India.

While officials from Australia, India and South Korea also attended expanded sessions on regional security cooperation and pandemic control, top diplomats from Asean, except for Myanmar, were invited for the first time to the gathering to discuss China’s maritime behavior.

The G7 meeting is expected to end later on Sunday with a statement on Russia, China and other pressing topics, such as Iran and North Korea.

An unnamed US official said there was “tremendous convergence” among top diplomats on how to deal with China, while Germany’s new foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said they agreed to designate China as a partner competitor and a system rival, according to Reuters.

Pang Zhongying, an expert on international affairs from the Ocean University of China, said the G7 meeting occurred at a critical time, as both Beijing and Washington were poised to take a tough foreign policy stand because of domestic considerations.

“It is both an opportunity and a challenge for the Biden administration to rally support over China, such as on the Olympics, as the gathering is expected to set the tone for their relations with China for 2022, when Germany will take over the EU presidency from Britain,” he said.

Unlike Britain and Australia which have joined the US in the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games, France declined to join Washington’s initiative while Germany and other European countries were waiting for a common EU response.

Citing China’s unusually strong reaction to Biden’s democracy summit, Pang said Beijing was unlikely to tone down its rhetoric in the lead-up to the Olympics and the sweeping leadership reshuffle at the Communist Party’s national congress late next year.

“Recent interactions between Beijing and Washington show they have been locked in a vicious cycle. Despite their pledges to avoid a new cold war, we are seeing growing signs of an ideological conflict comparable to those between the US and Soviet Union in their Cold War,” he said.

“Both sides have the incentives to play tough with each other ahead of the 20th party congress [in China] and the midterm elections [in the US] and I am not at all optimistic about US-China relations next year,” he said.

When it came to China’s relations with the EU, Pang said Beijing should be careful not to push the Europeans further into America’s orbit.

“While the US will continue to exert pressure on its European allies, China should take the EU’s interests into account, especially its needs to defend its autonomy on foreign policy and strike a balance in the US-China rivalry, and avoid further antagonising the EU. There are still opportunities to ease tensions with the EU,” he said.

European leaders say their hands are forced due to China’s repressive policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and its aggressive posturing on territorial issues, but Beijing has pointed the finger at the EU, alleging that its designation of China as a competitor and a systemic rival has soured the relationship.

China’s top envoy to Brussels Zhang Ming also appealed to European business groups last week, urging them to play a bigger role to reverse the downward spiral of the EU-China relations.

In a dialogue with several European business groups, Zhang confirmed he was leaving for Beijing soon and said he had a long list of regrets during his four-year stint as the Chinese ambassador to the EU. Topping the list was the suspension of a bilateral investment deal in the wake of the tit-for-tat sanctions over human rights allegations in Xinjiang last year.

“Having said that, the fundamentals of China-EU economic and trade cooperation in which the two sides develop by complementing each other’s strengths will not change,” he said.

“I sincerely hope that China and the EU will seek common ground while shelving differences … I hope to join all of you to make my list of regrets much shorter, and eventually turn it into a list of hopes and deliverables.”