{"id":75971,"date":"2022-10-20T16:30:29","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T05:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=75971"},"modified":"2022-10-20T18:31:38","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T07:31:38","slug":"europes-power-players-need-to-tread-carefully-with-beijing-visits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/europes-power-players-need-to-tread-carefully-with-beijing-visits\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s power players need to tread carefully with Beijing visits"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Among the go-to phrases peppered throughout the diatribes of Beijing\u2019s wolf-warrior diplomats is that countries are \u2018playing with fire\u2019 when they don\u2019t align with the Chinese government\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n

To repurpose this clich\u00e9, Europe\u2019s two most powerful leaders, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, are undoubtedly playing with fire with their planned<\/a> trips<\/a> to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping next month.<\/p>\n

Some level of diplomatic outreach is worthwhile, of course, since there are important areas in which China and Western powers need to cooperate as the world lurches into an ever more dangerous and complex era. \u2018Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war,\u2019 as Winston Churchill said. Not to mention an escalating climate crisis, which demands stronger Chinese action and international collaboration.<\/p>\n

These visits need to be handled deftly, however, or they could do more harm than good.<\/p>\n

To begin with, the timing of these trips is very poor. If the German chancellor and French president aren\u2019t clear and forceful, their visits may achieve nothing other than emboldening the Chinese leader, alienating democratic partners, undermining strategies to build resilience against China-related economic threats, weakening European solidarity and relegating Beijing\u2019s industrial-scale human rights abuses to second-order status in the process.<\/p>\n

Scholz and Macron, who\u2019ve not yet publicly announced the details of their plans, need to effectively convey their messages on key political and security issues to make their excursions worthwhile. If they are to go through with their trips, they should be going together, and they should delay the visit, so they aren\u2019t arriving straight after the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s national congress.<\/p>\n

If they do still go to Beijing in November, Scholz and Macron need to understand that by visiting so soon after the 20th party congress, where Xi will have secured a norm-breaking third term as general secretary and further consolidated his autocratic rule\u2014they will look like they are going to kiss the ring. Coverage of Xi receiving his guests, the de facto leaders of Europe, will be plastered all over the front pages of the CCP\u2019s propaganda outlets, and the Chinese population will thusly be informed of how the party is \u2018rejuvenating socialism in the world\u2019 and how their country\u2019s global pre-eminence is being established.<\/p>\n

In reality, these grip-and-grin photo opportunities will be occurring just as China\u2019s standing is in free fall across the democratic world. With ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet; military aggression in its neighbourhood; a \u2018no limits\u2019 partnership with Russia, Europe\u2019s violent antagonist; and escalating coercive behaviour against democratic countries, Beijing’s list of misconduct only continues to expand.<\/p>\n

Amid all this, Scholz\u2019s welcoming signal on economic ties, as he plans to take a business delegation with him on his trip, is particularly confusing for both industry and Germany\u2019s international partners. Just last month, Germany\u2019s economic affairs minister Robert Habeck announced that the government was looking to reduce dependence on Chinese trade and tighten investment screening. \u2018And from this you will see that there is no more naivety,\u2019 he said<\/a>. Foreign minister Annalena Baerbock declared that Germany must face up to risks of economic interdependence and abandon its belief in Wandel durch Handel<\/em>\u2014change through trade\u2014when it comes to Russia and China.<\/p>\n

Along these lines, many German businesses\u2014especially the Mittelstand<\/em> small and medium enterprises\u2014are, in fact, winding back their exposure to China. According to a local industry survey<\/a>, a quarter of Germany\u2019s manufacturing companies are now seeking to reduce imports from the country. Carmaker Stellantis NV, for example, closed its only Jeep factory in China<\/a> because of growing market interference. And as part of China\u2019s extreme economic coercion targeting Lithuania, German manufacturing companies like Continental have had their market access threatened<\/a> due to their Lithuanian supply chains.<\/p>\n

Xi himself is also driving a decoupling, or \u2018dual circulation\u2019, agenda, seeking to cut dependencies on foreign countries. Growing rules and restrictions favouring Chinese firms are harming foreign companies\u2019 market share and discouraging new investment, according to German businesses<\/a>. Beijing\u2019s zero-Covid addiction is also wreaking havoc.<\/p>\n

It is deeply questionable that Scholz is choosing this exact moment to take a squad of executives for a swim in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

One senses the influence of a handful of powerful German CEOs here, who remain dogmatically committed to the Chinese market and wield enormous political influence\u2014just look for the bosses of Volkswagen, Siemens or some of the other usual suspects in the chancellor\u2019s entourage. Scholz would be far better off taking these highfliers to some emerging markets in Asia instead.<\/p>\n

This pressure from corporate power brokers, along with the widening split between Scholz and his Greens coalition partners Habeck and Baerbock, doesn\u2019t bode well for the strength of Germany\u2019s long-awaited China strategy either, which is finally due out next year.<\/p>\n

All in all, it would be a serious mistake if either Scholz or Macron used their trips to pursue narrowly conceived national interests rather than conveying a clear and united European stance on a range of era-defining issues. The visits should demonstrate European unity and resolve, not exacerbate division. And if these two leaders must go to China, they should at least go together, go later, and go without any business players in tow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the go-to phrases peppered throughout the diatribes of Beijing\u2019s wolf-warrior diplomats is that countries are \u2018playing with fire\u2019 when they don\u2019t align with the Chinese government\u2019s interests. To repurpose this clich\u00e9, Europe\u2019s two most …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1494,"featured_media":75974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,291,694,1778],"class_list":["post-75971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-propaganda"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEurope\u2019s power players need to tread carefully with Beijing visits | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/europes-power-players-need-to-tread-carefully-with-beijing-visits\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Europe\u2019s power players need to tread carefully with Beijing visits | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Among the go-to phrases peppered throughout the diatribes of Beijing\u2019s wolf-warrior diplomats is that countries are \u2018playing with fire\u2019 when they don\u2019t align with the Chinese government\u2019s interests. 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