Recently, a high-level internal report from the European Union revealed that Xi Jinping has turned authoritarian and that the EU is disappointed with Beijing.
The French media recently revealed some “devilish details” of the China-EU investment agreement, which the Chinese Communist Party tried to use to torture the EU. However, the EU-China investment agreement has recently been thrown into the coffin, indicating that the EU is no longer under any illusions about Beijing.
On May 13, French newspaper Le Monde columnist Sylvie Kaufmann wrote about the EU’s investment agreement. On December 30, 2020, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was strongly encouraged by Xi Jinping, pressured her EU partners to reach a consensus on the seven-year delayed comprehensive investment agreement between China and Europe before the end of the German EU presidency.
Germany’s attitude at the time was: be quick, be fast, and let’s talk about the details later. However, as the saying goes, “the devil is in the details.” Since then, the details have come out as hard as squeezing toothpaste, and the details have become torture practiced by the Chinese Communist Party, the report said.
The newspaper disclosed that Article 9 of Annex II of the draft China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement includes the phrase, “Senior managers of non-profit organizations authorized to conduct business in China shall be Chinese citizens.”
Specifically, if Merkel’s CDU’s charity Konrad Adenauer Foundation (Konrad Ardenauer Foundation), which is a member of the Chinese government, is allowed to operate in China, it will be a Chinese citizen. If the Konrad Adenauer Foundation has an office in mainland China, that office must be headed by a Chinese national. Obviously, this is no guarantee of independence.
Moreover, the agreement’s investment clause in the audiovisual sector stipulates that no European film or television series can be shown on Chinese screens between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. without the consent of the Chinese Communist authorities. In addition, only Chinese cartoons can be shown on Chinese animation channels between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.
However, these strict rules find no counterpart on the EU side. Obviously this is not a fair principle.
On March 22, the EU joined the US, UK and Canada in imposing sanctions on Chinese officials and entities for persecuting human rights in Xinjiang, and the Chinese Communist Party immediately retaliated against 10 EU figures and four European entities.
This has not only strained relations between China and the EU, but also prompted the allied countries in Europe and the US to take a more unified stance against the CCP. Reinhard Butikofer, chairman of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with China, said bluntly that the Chinese Communist Party had “lifted a stone and smashed its own feet”.
Speaking at an April 8 seminar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, Butikofer said the retaliation was a sign of political defeat rather than a demonstration of the Communist Party’s strength. “In my opinion, the China-Europe Investment Agreement (CAI) is a lost cause in the European Parliament.”
The European Parliament then cancelled the discussion on the CAI, and eventually the European Commission, through the mouth of one of its vice-presidents, Valdis Dombrovsky, threw the deal in the coffin. According to Le Monde, this move shows that the EU has no more illusions about Beijing.
Chinese American scholar Minxin Pei wrote in the Australian publication The Strategist on April 8 that the Chinese Communist Party’s blacklisting of European parliamentarians and members of academic and research institutions is undermining the hard-earned deepening of the China-Europe trade partnership.
He argues that the CCP’s simultaneous decoupling from major Western economies such as the United States is tantamount to making enemies of the world, and that “China [the CCP] cannot afford it.
The wind has now changed in the EU’s favor, and it is blowing hard into the Indo-Pacific region. on May 8, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was invited by video to an EU summit in Porto, where the EU decided to restart negotiations on a free trade agreement with India.
In addition, the EU has shown an unprecedented toughness towards the Chinese Communist Party on human rights issues. But on the other hand, the Chinese Communist Party is also trying to pull in some of the EU’s member states.
The French newspaper Le Monde revealed that on May 10, Hungary again voted against the 26 EU member states, causing the EU statement condemning Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong to fail. The EU needs the unanimous approval of 27 member states to get the statement passed.
An outraged German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas decided to make public why the EU had not been able to raise its voice against Beijing’s crackdown and, in his view, to look for reasons “in the good relations between China (Communist Party) and Hungary”.
For his part, Hungarian Prime Minister Vladimir Orban unabashedly told the media that he had a phone call with Xi Jinping and that Xi appreciated Hungary’s “firm policy of friendship with China (the Communist Party)”.
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