Earlier this year, the Chinese Communist Party touted that China and the EU would conclude a landmark China-EU investment agreement within the year. Just this month, the Chinese Communist Party side had also optimistically teased that it would sign a deal with the EU on Dec. 22. The Communist Party propaganda machine was ready to celebrate and publicize as another “major achievement” of the Xi Jinping administration this year.
However, the China-EU investment agreement fell through at the last minute. A growing number of the 27 EU countries are opposed to signing the agreement with China. In the European Parliament in particular, the agreement was strongly opposed by member states. They argue that the agreement does not allow China to open up its economy enough and does not stop the Chinese Communist Party from violating human rights. The implication is that China must open its markets completely and that it must meet European standards for labor rights. Later, France, a major European power, came out and said that Paris would not agree to the China-EU agreement if Beijing did not address the issue of forced labor for Uighurs.
As it turns out, the international community has been highly concerned about Xinjiang since the revelation of the Communist concentration camp scandal, which not only threw millions of Uighurs (and Kazakhs) into concentration camps, replicating the atrocities of Nazi Germany in the last century, but also forced at least 570,000 Uighurs to work as hard laborers picking cotton, and in turn exported their cotton fabrics to countries around the world in a dignified manner. On Dec. 2 of this year, the U.S. government issued a sanctions order banning the import of cotton and cotton products from the Xinjiang Construction Corps because that is a product of forced labor prohibited by international conventions.
On December 22, both the European and Chinese sides were forced to cancel their scheduled negotiations or signing agendas. Seeing that the December 22 deadline had passed, on December 23, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang hurriedly called some European dignitaries to try to make a last-ditch attempt to salvage the deal. But after speaking with the prime ministers of Spain and the Netherlands, Li Keqiang realized that the momentum was gone.
In desperation, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman had to find a way out: “China will carry out external negotiations at its own pace and strive to reach a comprehensive, balanced and high-level investment agreement with the European side on the premise of safeguarding its own security and development interests.”
The implication is that Beijing is forced to accept the reality: the negotiations on the China-EU investment agreement have been postponed indefinitely. Only, needing to save face in front of the domestic public, it had to come to the spirit of Q: “at its own pace.” And by “its own security”, the Communist Party spokesman meant the security of the Communist regime. It is implied that the Chinese Communist Party will never sign an agreement because it is beneficial to the Chinese people, but rather because it is beneficial to the Chinese regime.
In fact, it is not only France and European countries that are questioning the China-EU investment agreement, but also the United States. The Trump administration cautioned the EU: without a strong enforcement and verification mechanism, any commitment by the Chinese side would be a mere propaganda victory for the Chinese Communist Party. The Biden camp, for its part, has called on Europe to “wait a little longer” (after Biden takes office) for the U.S. and Europe to “discuss our shared concerns about China’s economic behavior.” In other words, the U.S. and Europe should take a united stance against the CCP in order to achieve what the Biden camp claims is “the broadest possible international alliance.
Zhongnanhai should know for sure that unless the Communist Party changes its policy of persecution in Xinjiang and its regressive, anti-market economy policy (the hallmark event of the moment: the Xi regime’s all-out crackdown on China’s richest man, Jack Ma, and his Alibaba and Ant Financial Services), there is no hope for a China-EU agreement. In particular, Premier Li Keqiang should know that under the ultra-leftist line of Xi Jinping, Wang Huning and others, there is no room for the CCP to change course, and that external agreements such as the China-EU investment agreement, which must protect labor rights, are doomed to be a sham.
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