1 February 2021, NIICE Commentary 6765
Dr. Hemant Adlakha
Chinese President Xi Jinping “managed” to clinch trade agreement with the European Union as curtain was drawn on the COVID-19-stricken year 2020. China’s Europe watchers applauded Beijing’s successful “managing” well the Sino-EU relations. With early indications that European leaders want to team up with Biden to rebuild transatlantic relations, it will be interesting to see if China can “manage” EU as a way-out to counter strong headwinds from Washington.
China’s “liberal” yet influential semi-official financial daily, Caixin, in a year-in-review editorial entitled ‘China’s Diplomacy in 2020’ last December observed: “Beijing has wasted no time in advancing its regional trade agenda with Southeast Asian countries and the European Union this year.” Welcoming Beijing’s last-minute push towards concluding of a trade agreement with the EU as the past year ended, the editorial further noted, “It fits a familiar pattern of Beijing’s diplomatic practices that when its relations with the US soured, Beijing would again unite with the EU to counter the US”
Interestingly, the pattern is not exclusive to China alone. Major EU economies – Germany, France and Britain too have been resorting to similar ‘manipulative’ diplomatic practices of uniting with China to counter the US. As professor emeritus of economics at Duke University, Thomas H Naylor, had once described German Chancellor Angela Markel’s February 2012 visit to China, “In an act of desperation Markel travelled to Beijing, hat in hand, to seek bailout funds from the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao” to spare some of China’s excess foreign exchange reserves to keep the Euro afloat. Aware of Washington’s irritation on the thought of the EU becoming financially dependent on Beijing, and therefore to placate her American handlers “Markel even appealed to China to support tough UN Security Council sponsored sanctions against Iran,” Naylor wrote nine years ago. Naylor is also co-author of the book Downsizing the USA.
Recently, a certain new trends emerging in several European capitals are causing concern to China’s Europe watchers. Last week, China’s seasoned foreign affairs commentator, Cao Xin, wrote in his weekly ftchinese.com column, “It seems certain President Biden is going to strive hard to pursue both competitive and cooperative relationship with China. In order to sustain itself Beijing must hold on to Japan, ASEAN and Europe.” “Since Japan and ASEAN are both in the Asia Pacific and their relations with China are inevitably delicate, therefore ,Europe is very important for Beijing,” Cao Xin added.
First, Armin Laschet, a close ally of Angela Markel was elected the leader of Germany’s ruling party Christian Democratic Union (CDU). With Merkel stepping down after elections in September, Laschet is expected to be the chancellor candidate for Germany’s conservative ruling CDU-CSU alliance. Like observers in Germany and in Europe, most Europe watchers in China too view Laschet becoming the CDU leader as good not only for Sino-German but also for Sino-EU ties – because he is a known Merkel loyalist.
The other important factor as far as China is concerned is, Laschet is currently the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to Germany’s large number of enterprises with businesses in China. The region is also home to the European headquarters of China’s telecommunications giant Huawei. “Laschet, a long-term Merkel ally, is good news for China-Germany relations and China-Europe relations as he is likely to follow Merkel’s pragmatic approach,” said Ding Chun, Director of the European Studies Centre, Fudan University in Shanghai. Besides, the city of Duisburg has been described as Germany’s “China City” as it is the first European stop for dozens of trains travelling along the China-Europe Express Railway, a major link in the Belt and Road Initiative, reported the South China Morning Post last week. But there is a flip side too. Some recent developments in Germany’s politics and society are causing serious concerns for China. Firstly, like the past convention, Laschet as the CDU leader is not automatically going to become chancellor this time. The CDU’s sister alliance party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Markus Söder has clearly emerged as a strong contender and is well-ahead of Laschet in the polls. In a recent Infratest Dimap survey, 32 percent of CDU-CSU members polled thought Laschet would make a good chancellor candidate. That compares with 80 percent support for Söder.
Second, according to a recent poll conducted by the Mercator Institute of Chinese Studies (MERICS) in Berlin, nearly 50 percent experts and specialists polled feel after the elections in September this year, Germany will become tough on China. While on the other hand, under Biden presidency, Europe’s relations with America will be closer. Although Germany is reeling under fresh wave of COVID-19, its economy is expected to rebound this year and grow at 4.2 percent. To that end, while the Chinese recovery may be good news for several German companies doing business in China, “it is complicating efforts by Chancellor Merkel’s government to diversify trade relations and become less dependent on Asia’s rising superpower.”
And third, a few days ago, Germany’s DW Akademie (in its Mandarin version) editorial, asked: “With President Biden in the White House, are Europe and America set on rebuilding the old ties?” In an optimistic reply to its own question, the DW said: “Observers agree that many things will improve after Biden enters the Capitol Hill, but not everything will change. But the only certainty is Europe must become an attractive partner [to US].”
Widely read in the mainland China, dw.com/zh cited several European top leaders hoping to see the US soon joining Europe’s “fight against China.” It quoted what European Council President Charles Michel said in a speech he delivered on the day President Biden was to be sworn in: “On the first day of his [Biden’s] mandate, I address a solemn proposal to the new US President. Let’s build a new founding pact, for a stronger Europe, for a stronger America and for a better world.” The DW editorial also carried a tweet on the same day by European Commission chairwoman Ursula von den Leyen: “The new dawn in America is the moment we have been waiting for.”
Not only in Germany, similar trends are being noticed elsewhere in Europe too. For example in France, according to the media organization NPR, “French see Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for the Secretary of State, as one of their own.” Speaking in French in an interview to a Paris-based television days before Senate confirmation hearing, Blinken lamented the US abdicating its world leadership role: “Without us, it’s the law of the jungle. And if China takes our place, then it will be their rules that define the 21st century.”
Contrast the above with a signed article a month ago by Professor Hu Hong, a European affairs expert at one of China’s leading IR think tanks – China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), “After the current US President Trump’s ‘destruction’ of US-Europe relations in the past four years, it will be a huge gain for Europe if ‘committed Atlanticist’ can finally come to power.” In a candid article, well-known Defence and Strategic Affairs Analyst Li Aoshuang commented, “Trump’s ‘America first’ has hugely irritated Europe. The Trump administration once bluntly called NATO as outdated and later questioned European Unity.” Reacting to Li’s write-up, a [Chinese] reader wrote, EU must be grateful to President Trump for making Europe finally leave America.
No wonder Europe Foreign Affairs Council centre in Berlin’s Jana Pulgieri has already earned many admirers in China for her recent remarks. Echoing French Minister for European Affairs Clément Beaune for defending the highly criticized new EU-China agreement, Pulgieri, indirectly referring to mounting US pressure on Europe to delay the agreement with China, last week said, “We absolutely must repair the bad start in policy towards China.”
