European lawmakers sanctioned by China spoke in one voice at a seminar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, on April 8 to let China know that they don’t eat sanctions.
After the European Union sanctioned Chinese officials and entities over the Xinjiang issue, China offered counter-sanctions against members of the European Parliament, which apparently backfired. Several members of the European Parliament who have been sanctioned by China pointed out on April 8 that China is “lifting a stone to smash its own feet,” and that they will not accept this and will continue to pay attention to Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
The Chairman of the European Parliament Delegation for China Relations, Reinhard Butikofer, is German; Miriam Lexmann, who was elected to the European Parliament for the first time, is from Slovakia, and Dovilė Šakalienė, a Lithuanian MP, are three European political figures from different countries who have recently The three European politicians from different countries have had something in common, as they have all been the subject of Chinese sanctions because of their concerns about Xinjiang or Hong Kong. But at a seminar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, the three spoke in unison to let China know that they don’t eat sanctions.
Kalienė: “We in Lithuania are a small country, and China still says we are ‘Washington’s little brother,’ but Lithuania has deep historical experience and knows the tricks of Lenin’s dictatorship, they want to ‘force politics with business,’ which is like set a mousetrap, and if we see only economic bait in our eyes, we’re screwed.”
Lexman noted, “China has misjudged the shift in the World Council’s attitude towards China, especially when Australia is being bullied by China for merely calling for an investigation into the origins of the new crown epidemic, and they are trying to do the same thing again to influence the functioning of the European Union and democratic institutions.”
China has misjudged the situation and is ‘lifting a stone to its own feet’, which is instead a sign of political failure rather than a demonstration of China’s strength,” said Boreham. In my opinion, the China-EU Investment Agreement (CAI) is out of luck in the European Parliament.”
For the three men, being on China’s sanctions blacklist turned out to be a badge of honor, and the substantive impact of the sanctions, the details of which were not released by China, on them personally was vaguely limited.
Boreham said he would try to avoid calling his Chinese friends in Hong Kong in the short term for fear they would be implicated; Lexman, who has worked on human rights in the past, noted that she would not stop focusing on human rights issues in China; and Kaliyane said her diplomat husband would not be stationed in Hong Kong or China. They all said that what is right is right if it has to pay this little price.
U.S.-European Hatred of China Alliance? White House Official: Defending Values and Principles
Before Secretary of State John Blinken’s recent visit to the European Union and NATO, the United States, the European Union, Canada and the United Kingdom sanctioned Chinese officials on a rare occasion on the same day at the end of March on the issue of human rights in Xinjiang, especially the EU sanctioned four Chinese officials and a construction company, the EU again after the “Tiananmen Massacre” in 1989. The sanctions were imposed on China.
China immediately announced a counter-attack and expanded its counter-sanctions to ten EU officials and four European entities.
Laura Rosenberger, senior director for China at the White House National Security Council, told a Brookings Institution seminar that the United States is “deeply concerned” about China’s retaliation against European political figures and entities, but that the U.S.-European alliance will only deepen and there is plenty of room for cooperation.
“The Biden administration has made it very clear that working closely with allies and partners is a central part of foreign policy in dealing with China, as in the case of human rights in Xinjiang. I want to emphasize that the U.S.-European trans-Pacific alliance is often portrayed as an amalgam of antagonists, but we are showing that collective action and unity is strong when it comes to defending the universal values of international principles and human rights.” Rosenberg said.
China-Europe Investment Agreement Xi Jinping’s Self-Destructive Report Card
After international criticism and sanctions against human rights in Xinjiang, China’s retaliation, and counter-sanctions, ring hollow, especially as China’s practices against European countries have accelerated the mending of relations between the countries of the transatlantic alliance between Europe and the United States.
Chinese American scholar Minxin Pei, writing in The Strategist, a publication of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), pointed out that China’s blacklisting of European parliamentarians and members of academic and research institutions is damaging the hard-earned deepening of the China-Europe trade partnership, and that China has misjudged the importance of its own market.
Pei Minxin points out that it is in China’s interest for Canada, Europe and the United Kingdom to remain relatively neutral in the process of U.S.-China competition; although costly, China can afford to decouple its economy from the United States, but decoupling from other major Western economies at the same time would be tantamount to making enemies of the world, and “China cannot afford that.
The first thing this jeopardizes, he said, is the China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement (CIA) that Xi Jinping has managed to conclude with the EU. This agreement needs to be approved by the European Parliament. However, the European Parliament has recently canceled a discussion on the China-EU investment agreement. Other parliamentarians have argued that China should be required to ratify the International Labor Organization convention on forced labor first.
Chinese market can be cut or abandoned Beijing is wrong twice in a row?
Pei Minxin points out that, especially in its response to the Xinjiang cotton strategy, China has misjudged the importance of its own market, mistakenly believing that multinational companies need China unilaterally.
He pointed out in the article to H & M as an example, H & M’s top two markets are the United States and Germany, although China is the third largest market, but last year’s revenue accounted for only 5% of H & M, H & M can afford to lose the Chinese market, but China’s 621 H & M suppliers can not afford to lose H & M this big buyer’s losses.
The Australian also reported recently that although Australia’s exports to China fell by A$20 billion a year, Australian producers of barley, coal, copper, cotton, sugar and timber have diversified their markets or found new buyers to offset some of their export losses after China imposed tariff sanctions, with only Australian wine affected by the sanctions, exporting less than A$1 billion to the Chinese market last year.
Roland Rajah, chief economist at the Lowy Institute in Australia, said the impact of China’s sanctions on exports of Australian products was “quite limited”.
Pei concludes his article by saying that there is still time for China to turn the situation around, for example by allowing independent experts to visit cotton farms in Xinjiang to conduct field investigations. If China does not have forced labor, this is the best way to prove its case and improve relations with the Western world.
But he also pessimistically argues that such a sensible move is unlikely to be adopted, as China’s leaders are convinced of their own misjudgment that the Chinese market is so big that the West will not give up, but have previously misjudged that the US will not decouple from China, and this time with Europe, China may be wrong again.
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