Controversy dogs China’s search for European partners
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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s five-country European trip this month was a low-profile partnership pitch to European allies, but thorny issues including Hong Kong have instead brought controversy and challenge.
The late-August timing was selected by China for several reasons. First, with much of Europe on holiday,Beijing was hoping to avoid public protests at a troubled time for bilateral ties. However, issues such as the new Chinese security law in Hong Kong and Uighur Muslim human rights in Xinjiang province have been raised with Wang during his stops in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and France. Worse still, there have been protests by MPs and MEPs from a new Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.
A second reason for the timing of the trip, Wang’s first since February, is that he is acutely aware that several key European nations will make difficult China-related choices in coming weeks, for example on whether to allow Huawei to be part of their 5G networks. His pitch this week, soon after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s most recent visit to the continent, is that Beijing is a more reliable partner than Donald Trump’s Washington.
Europe is becoming an increasingly important theater for China and the rising power has generally enjoyed growing influence across much of the continent in recent years. Last year, for instance, Italy became the first G7 state to endorse the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
While Italy is not always seen as among the top-tier global powers, part of the reason its endorsement has such significance (and drew huge criticism from the US) is Rome’s continued systemic importance in Europe. It is not just a G7 state, but also the third-largest eurozone economy and poses perhaps the biggest threat to the single currency area’s future because it has the second-biggest debt load in the bloc.
In eastern and central Europe too, Beijing’s growing influence is being felt through so-called “16+1” meetings hosted by China. The goal is intensifying and expanding cooperation in the fields of investment, transport, finance, science, education, and culture.
Key trends are increasingly apparent in China’s external interventions in Europe. For instance, Beijing is tailoring its approach around bespoke needs of individual states or blocs of countries such as the 16+1 forum. Further, Chinese overtures are coming with a clear quid pro quo as underlined by Italy’s signing up to BRI in exchange for investment from Beijing.
Europe is becoming an increasingly important theater for China and the rising power has generally enjoyed growing influence across much of the continent in recent years.
Andrew Hammond
Yet while China has made many diplomatic inroads into the continent in recent years, relations in 2020 have been set back since the pandemic, especially in western Europe, where there is concern in some countries about the transparency of Beijing’s handling of the original coronavirus outbreak.
This has coincided with a range of other issues, including the clampdown in Hong Kong, and there is growing pressure on continental European leaders on 5G following the decisions of the UK, US, and Australia not to allow Huawei technology in their networks.
The new chill in the air has even led EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell to assert that China is not just an economic partner but a “systemic rival that seeks to promote an alternative model of governance.” A particular concern in Brussels is that Beijing’s growing focus on Europe is aimed at “dividing and ruling: to undermine the continent’s collective interests.
For example, while the BRI initiative is endorsed not just by Italy but also by several central and eastern European states, other countries such as France have reservations, not least given frustrations over Beijing’s perceived slowness to open up its own economy, and a wave of Chinese takeovers of European firms in key industries.
In this context, several key western European countries are now thinking more carefully about their future relationships with Beijing. And were it not for the fact that the Atlantic relationship with the US under Trump also looks so fragile, it is quite possible that some of the continent’s leaders would now remonstrate with China much more.
As things stand, however, there is too much uncertainty in US-Europe ties for that to happen. The European leaders who met Wang last week therefore gave him a judicious hearing stressing not just irritant issues, but also areas of common interest, including the importance of an open, multilateral trading system, and tackling climate change.
Despite post-pandemic tensions, both Europe and China still recognize that they have much to gain from their partnership, especially at a time of continued uncertainty from the US under Trump. But Wang’s trip has also been a reminder that the window of opportunity for closer collaboration may not remain open indefinitely, especially if the range of issues clouding ties grows, and there is a change of leadership in the White House in January.
- Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics
