Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday after relations between the European Union and China deteriorated sharply over the Uighur human rights issue. Xi hoped the EU would “make positive efforts” to improve bilateral ties.
AFP reported that the call between the Chinese leader and the EU leader was the first contact with the EU since last month when the EU sanctioned China over human rights in Xinjiang and China followed up with countermeasures against the EU. Relations between China and the EU deteriorated sharply after that incident.
Xi’s call with Merkel appears to be salvageable, according to observers. The U.S. side is making global moves, the EU has joined the U.S. in targeting China while launching sanctions against it, and Japan, a U.S. ally that has always been cautious with China, is now taking an increasingly hard line against it. Against this backdrop, Xi Jinping seems to have hopes for the EU, especially for Merkel, the current EU President-in-Office.
For one thing, China’s bilateral trade with the EU is a big part of Sino-German trade, a point Xi made clear in his call, emphasizing the importance of China to the German economy: “China has been Germany’s largest global trade partner for five consecutive years, reflecting the resilience and potential of Sino-German cooperation”, which Merkel also knows very well She knows very well where the interests of Germany lie.
Secondly, after Merkel’s presidency, and the end of last year with the Chinese side reached a seven-year-long negotiations of the China-EU investment agreement in principle. This controversial agreement is considered to be related to Merkel’s all-out promotion, and there is thus a public opinion in Europe criticizing Merkel for engaging in appeasement with China.
Xi Jinping and Merkel spoke on the phone, and according to Xinhua, Xi stressed that he and Merkel “communicated many times last year and played an important leading role in the development of Sino-German and Sino-European relations,” and apparently Xi hopes that China and Germany will continue to play a “leading role. He added, “China, Germany and China-EU can achieve meaningful and significant results by strengthening cooperation, and I hope that Germany and Europe will make positive efforts together with China. “
China had major plans to strengthen relations with the EU and form a new triangle between China, the U.S. and Europe before U.S. President Joe Biden officially took office. The U.S. has a high bipartisan consensus on the Chinese Communist Party, and the Chinese Communist Party is unlikely to have much hope for improved bilateral relations after Biden takes office. Initially, China may have had a little hope for the Biden administration, but now that hope is getting dimmer and dimmer. Then, bringing China’s massive economic power to strengthen ties with a moderate EU, at least at the economic level, would break the U.S. plan to isolate China.
The EU, which has seen itself treated unfairly by the U.S. side during the Trump administration, also has plans to complete a China-EU investment agreement with China as soon as possible before Biden takes power, lest he demand more human rights considerations be attached to it. As a result, the controversial agreement was passed at Merkel’s urging. As expected, the United States expressed its displeasure.
Xi Jinping’s phone call with Merkel had the hope of redeeming the relationship. Thus, he said, China-Europe relations face new opportunities for development, as well as various challenges. In particular, Xi stressed that China and Europe “should respect each other and exclude interference. China’s development is an opportunity for the EU, and we hope that the EU will make a correct judgment independently and truly realize its strategic autonomy”.
After the failure of the U.S.-China dialogue in Alaska, China realized that the U.S. is forming an encirclement around China in Europe and in Asia, but Xi’s statement shows that the EU still seems to be breakable, so he stressed that the EU should make a correct judgment independently, implying that it should not follow the U.S. and “truly realize its strategic autonomy.
Compared to the prevailing style of war wolves, Xi’s two sentences are very mild, but carefully weighed are also very undiplomatic, as if he is teaching the EU and advising it to “make correct judgments independently”, giving the impression that the EU is still very immature and therefore needs to “truly realize its strategic autonomy The EU is still very immature and therefore needs “real strategic autonomy”.
The German side has not yet disclosed what Merkel talked about on the phone, but the first sentence mentioned in the Xinhua draft is: “Merkel said the European side insists on autonomy in foreign relations”, which is undoubtedly a rebuttal to Xi Jinping’s statement above, and is also in line with the reality of the EU, which is the world’s largest economy and the EU’s internal economic This is not to say that the EU does not need to trade with China. The EU is not unaware that China is an opportunity for the EU, but China also needs the EU, and the EU is also an opportunity for China. In terms of strategic issues, if independence means security, among EU member states France is both a permanent member of the Security Council and has an independent military system, while the EU as a whole has an enduring and strong military partnership with the United States through NATO. In terms of intimacy, the EU is a U.S. ally, not only because of historical factors, but more importantly because of the proximity of values. Despite the contradictions between the U.S. and Europe, the concept of human rights and democratic values are the same.
China should perhaps ask itself, China’s economy is getting bigger and more developed, both the EU and the US need China’s market and need to do business with China, but why is the popularity getting worse and worse? Why is the relationship between Europe and the United States and China deteriorating so much? The core problem remains in the values. The specific trigger this time is the issue of human rights in Xinjiang.
For the first time in more than 30 years since June 4, the EU has imposed sanctions on China over the human rights issue in Xinjiang, and it is a very significant move for a country with 27 member states to make such a unified decision. This round of exchanges destroyed the friendly atmosphere created by the bilateral investment agreement reached between the two sides at the end of last year. The subsequent wave of boycotts of foreign goods, fanned by official Chinese public opinion, has made Beijing’s image even more hideous to the world.
For a Chinese Communist Party that has been in constant confrontation with the United States, taking countermeasures with this EU sanction has ostensibly taken a bite out of a bad mood, but in essence has suffered a major setback. The prospects for ratification of the China-EU investment agreement now look, at least, gloomy.
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