Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by phone on Wednesday (April 7) at a time when relations between China and the European Union are at a low point. Xi said he hoped the EU would make the right judgment “independently” at a time when China-EU relations are facing “various challenges.
In the middle of last month, the EU joined with the United States, Britain and Canada to announce sanctions against key Communist Party officials involved in the persecution of the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang. This was the first time since the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 that the EU and the UK had imposed sanctions on the CCP on human rights grounds.
Beijing immediately hit back, announcing sanctions against 10 individuals and four entities in Europe, including several members of the European Parliament and some of Europe’s leading think tanks and academics. This round of exchanges destroyed the friendly atmosphere created by the bilateral investment agreement reached late last year and caused a major setback to the Chinese Communist Party, which is in the midst of a confrontation with the United States.
Analysts say Xi’s phone call with Merkel is an apparent hope that Sino-European relations will not continue to deteriorate and that some more efforts will be made to salvage bilateral cooperation.
Merkel, who has been the German chancellor since 2005, is a well-known pro-Chinese figure in the EU. Germany is the largest economy among the 27 EU member states.
In the call, Xi said the EU and China should “respect each other” and “eliminate interference. However, Xinhua’s report did not specify the source of the “interference.
Xi urged Germany and the EU to work together with China to maintain the healthy and stable development of bilateral cooperation. He also said China is willing to work with the international community to promote the “fair and reasonable distribution” of the CCP virus vaccine and opposes the “politicization” of the vaccine or “vaccine nationalism.
The dispute between the EU and China could undermine the EU-China investment agreement, which was reached at the end of 2020 after years of negotiations. EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis later said that the fate of the EU-China Comprehensive Investment Agreement was tied to the latest diplomatic dispute. He said, “The retaliatory sanctions by the Chinese Communist Party are regrettable and unacceptable.” He said the “prospect of ratification” of the agreement would depend on how the situation evolves.
The European Parliament’s large group of center-left socialists and democrats made it clear that ending sanctions against the European Parliament was a “prerequisite” for progress on ratifying the investment deal.
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