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Czech foreign minister calls for more united EU-US approach to China
- Jan Lipavsky intervenes in Europe debate to remind bloc that it needs Washington’s cooperation more than Beijing’s
- While Brussels ponders strategy, Central and Eastern European countries are taking a more assertive approach towards Beijing
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Finbarr Berminghamin Brussels
Europe should work more closely with the United States in forging a common policy towards China, according to the Czech Republic’s foreign minister.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Jan Lipavsky said the EU “has to cooperate with the US, much more than [with] China”.
“That’s my plea, that’s my intervention into the European debate,” Lipavsky said, amid a heated debate in the EU over a new China strategy, and on how aligned its approach should be with that of Washington.
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Some parts of the bloc – notably France and Germany – have sought to create distance with some of Washington’s more hawkish policies and prefer to view China policy through a broadly economic lens.
A paper commissioned by the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell and debated by EU members this month, said the bloc “should not subscribe to an idea of a zero-sum game whereby there can only be one winner, in a binary contest between the US and China”.
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But Lipavsky is a prominent voice in a caucus of Central and Eastern European countries that looks to Washington as a guarantor of their national security.
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