By Tom Fowdy
As reported by the BBC: "EU-China relations have reached an inflection point" as President Ursula von der Leyen told her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a one-day summit in Beijing.
It was a summit which China approached with minimal enthusiasm, and Beijing reduced the summit itself to a day. It comes just weeks after European Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas, who we should note is very hawkish, stirred the pot by claiming that Wang Yi told her it was in China's interest to prevent Russia from losing in the war in Ukraine. The EU staged this to pave the way for imposing sanctions on two minor Chinese banks, accusing them of funding the way.
Yet for the European Union, there are no easy decisions in its relationship with China. Beijing is a critical trade and investment partner, but its market dominance and ascendancy up the industrial chain have also become a recurring source of tension. Europe wants more market access, more reciprocity in trade, and has made this clear for years.
However, political forces have conspired together to prevent moves in this direction from happening, such as the political sabotage of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CIA) in 2021 through a coordinated Xinjiang psychological warfare campaign pushed by the US and the UK, respectively.
China has since removed the reciprocal sanctions it imposed on EU lawmakers over this fiasco, but this was only a convenient ruse by the parliament to refuse to deal with the treaty, and not a genuine grievance. Hence, lifting such sanctions has yielded no tangible benefits in the relationship because the strategic reality of China-EU relations has fundamentally shifted. This is how it is. Do the hawkish lawmakers who got "unbanned" from China truly care? Of course not.
However, Europe has also paid the price for its decision to put "all its eggs in one basket" during the Biden administration, with Ursula Von Der Leyen having become aggressively pro-Atlanticist. It is very clear in China's diplomatic unspoken mannerisms that it is implicitly disrespected. She is expected to come to China and not the other way round, while her access to its leadership is deliberately curtailed. This is because she is deemed a political nuisance, an unwelcome obstruction at that, who advances agendas that are hostile to China. Beijing much prefers to deal bilaterally with EU heads of state and gives them preferential treatment. When this happens, Von Der Leyen repeatedly tags along, often to make a point about preventing them from undermining the collective EU interest, and receives even less preferential treatment in the process.
But things aren't going in Europe's favour. As Trump has come into office and taken a hostile agenda towards the European Union on trade, the bloc has collectively found itself "stuck between a rock and a hard place." The President is effectively closing the US market to the world. The most preferential deals he is striking don't go any longer than 10-15% on tariffs, while also demanding unilateralist, unreciprocated access to the target's market. While many weaker states in Asia have capitulated to these one-sided details, namely Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the European Union is an advanced economic bloc with leverage of its own and more to lose if it agrees.
On a strategic level, this means whether they like it or not, Europe must find a space to get along with China, even if it has fundamental reservations over the war in Ukraine and strategic pressure from Washington to oppose them anyway. It is the overarching strategic goal of the United States to undermine European industries at the expense of furthering its own market share, and it does not care about the economic costs imposed on the continent in the process. If Europe is going to expand its exports, then China is the primary and most obvious destination, but the question is how do you get that when you have binned an investment treaty which was designated for doing so?
Still, on China's side, they can't afford to lose the EU. It has always been Beijing's strategic objective to dilute European alignment with the United States as much as possible, and despite the inertia from the "institutional" level of the bloc attempting to stop it, this hasn't been a complete failure. But Europe isn't the only one engaging in a balancing act at the same time. The Russia issue is an inverse mirror strategically.
China needs Russia as a strategic partner, and will not allow its defeat in Ukraine, yet, Beijing also needs Europe as a market and economic partner. Thus, both sides in this situation are boxed into an uncomfortable deadlock of reluctant dependency, with both needing to work with each other, yet at the same time being completely unwilling, or perhaps unable, to give the other party what it wants.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
Opinion | The Ukrainian state reveals its true face
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