The EU-China agreement inaugurates the post-Trump: normalization with Beijing gallops, despite everything …
Not a test of the EU's maturity, a test of stupidity. The hasty EU-China rapprochement snubs Biden and displaces those hoping for a common transatlantic front against Beijing. But the new approach announced by the US president-elect and his advisers – no retaliation against allies for their decisions and inclusion of China in the global order – has reassured Europeans.
It is to be hoped, for this New Year 2021, that the removal of the statue of President Lincoln, yesterday in Boston, is not the premonitory sign of the new world order that awaits us in these new Twenties.
This cursed year ends for the European Union with two important agreements. A commercial agreement, finalized and signed, with the United Kingdom; and an agreement in principle with China, so for now a political declaration, on mutual investment. The EU claimed to keep London aligned, even in the future, with its own regulations and standards, and instead decides to "align" itself politically with Beijing. In fact, the strategic value of the EU-China link that this agreement outlines is undeniable, considering the qualitative leap that would determine, if it entered into force, the economic interdependence between the two partners.
An agreement comes, paradoxically, at the end of the year which was supposed to finally open their eyes, in the West, on the unreliability of the Chinese regime: the year silting, the lies, the grave responsibilities in the global catastrophe caused by the "China Virus ” , a topic that no longer even daring to raise; of the blatant violation of Hong Kong's autonomy by Beijing – condemned as such, in words, even by Brussels; and an unprecedented level of aggression in the posture of the People's Republic, which bullied large countries such as India and Australia but also EU member states and parliaments.
After this year, in which China has revealed its totalitarian face internally, and increasingly aggressive externally, one would have expected an opposition, not appeasement . Instead, the EU has chosen the latter.
Donald Trump has not yet left the White House and, as few had expected, normalization with Beijing is already galloping, despite everything …
Time will tell if the EU-China agreement is the relic of a season now behind us, that of unconditional trust in China's openness and in the magnificent and progressive fate of globalization, or if it is the calm after the "Trump storm" , that season that resumes its course, abruptly interrupted in 2016.
In any case, as on Brexit , we had also seen it right on the EU-China agreement here on Atlantico Quotidiano . The late summer cool-down by Brussels and Berlin was only tactics, not the first effect of a rethinking process initiated on relations with Beijing. Chancellor Merkel's determination to end it remained intact.
And it is no coincidence that both Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the true architects of the agreement, did not wait for Joe Biden to take office in the White House, but instead awaited the outcome of the November 3 elections, before to give decisive acceleration to the negotiations – reported last December 18 by both European and Chinese sources in the South China Morning Post and the Financial Times .
The conclusion of the six-month German presidency of the EU was the last chance for the chancellor, who has come to the end of her long political career, to give her face to this agreement, in which she sees the crowning of her European policy and her approach. with Beijing ("it is positive and important to try to have strategic relations with China"), its most important legacy to the EU and its country: a solid anchoring of Europe "between the great powers, China and the United States".
And this brings us to the second reason. By reaching an agreement in principle with Beijing before Biden took office, the German presidency and the European Commission, also German, wanted to send a precise message: the EU exists as a global player, it can play at the same level of superpowers such as the United States and China, and now it moves in complete autonomy from Washington.
And here we are at the third reason. As we had anticipated in Atlantico Quotidiano both in mid-September and in early July , both sides agreed to wait to see who was the winner of the US presidential elections and move accordingly. And both agreed that the winner was Biden, who promised to overcome Trump's harsh approach to his European allies, Germany in the first place. Berlin could have aimed for an agreement without fearing Washington's anger and reprisals. Conversely, with Trump confirmed in the White House it would have been difficult, if not impossible, and in any case very risky for the EU and Germany, to close even in principle such an agreement with China.
Of course, the Europeans could have waited for the settlement of Biden, who had announced that he wanted to involve the allies in the new approach to Beijing. The president-elect and his advisers have made it very clear that they want to coordinate with US allied countries in Europe and the Indo-Pacific to address the Chinese question. Therefore, returning to a multilateral approach, after the four years of Trump's bilateral approach.
But the prospect of a common US-EU front has led Xi Jinping to anticipate and, as we hypothesized months ago , to drop the sugar at the right time to close the agreement and try to insert a wedge between the United States and Europe . In any case, to complicate the plans of the new US administration. As suggested by Andrew A. Michta in the Wall Street Journal , that of Xi Jinping is an interesting hand: he has the opportunity to wedge himself into the divisions between the US and the EU – as Nixon did in the 1970s, distancing China from the USSR, so that the two communist powers do not join forces against the West – playing the card of access to the Chinese market, considered essential for the European economic recovery. European leaders, he noted, "are increasingly worried about Chinese bullying, but they don't want to be pulled into an alliance with Washington against Beijing."
In Berlin, Brussels and Paris, of course, they realized the convergent interest in concluding the agreement before Biden's inauguration and therefore considered that this was the most favorable moment to snatch some concessions from Xi Jinping. Concessions which, however, it is clear, are all to be verified. From the promise to guarantee European companies access to the Chinese market in important sectors to the commitment to make “continuous and lasting efforts” to ratify the ILO conventions on forced labor (which is very different from the commitment to ratify them!). Hearing about the "level playing field" with China, then, should make people smile, since Beijing would never deprive itself of subsidies and state enterprises.
It is very likely that Xi Jinping is only interested in getting closer to Europe before the new US administration can weave a common Western position, ready to renege on these commitments if necessary, as is the custom of Chinese diplomacy.
If so, with their opportunism, European leaders would have undermined efforts to create a common Western front capable of forcing China to finally accept the rules of the game of the liberal economic order.
In addition to snubbing the incoming US administration, the hasty rapprochement between the European Union and China displaces all those who are under the illusion that the Biden presidency can start a common transatlantic front against China. For two reasons. First, because as we have seen, the path taken by the EU is divergent. Secondly, also because, despite the declared intentions, the new US administration's strategy towards Beijing is based on assumptions that have already proven to be fallacious and therefore promises to be ineffective.
It is precisely the new approach announced by Biden and his advisers, in fact, that has convinced the Europeans that they can conclude the agreement with Beijing without risking reprisals or consequences – at most a fleeting "dissatisfaction" with the elected president. Allies reassured that they would no longer be unilaterally threatened or punished by Washington for their decisions, as the Trump administration did; and clarified that Biden's goal is not a new Cold War with Beijing, but a return to the politics of engagement , a global order that includes, does not exclude China, although trying to evolve its positions towards Western demands.
Those hoping for a change of course in Berlin have therefore sinned with optimism. First of all, because the German industry is too exposed to China, it is the poisoned fruit of an economy that focuses entirely on exports. But it is difficult not to see how for the German-led EU this agreement is not dictated only by commercial and economic logic, but also by geopolitics. It is unthinkable that these implications have not been taken into account.
It is true that in Berlin the concept of "strategic autonomy" is declined in less naive terms than in Paris: the Germans know very well that they cannot do without the security guaranteed by American taxpayers, and therefore that they have to make some effort to maintain the alliance with the USA. But in Trump's exit from the White House – a president who had no qualms about reducing the US contingent in Germany – they see a narrow escape, precisely that of having to choose between the US security umbrella and their economic interests with China.
Therefore, in Berlin they are convinced that they can deal with Biden, offering loyalty to Washington in spite of Macronian ambitions (Europeans know that "they must take greater responsibility", "make greater efforts on the security front", EU defense "complementary" to the NATO) and in exchange obtaining room for maneuver to continue to pursue its Eurasian vocation undisturbed and without risk.
Only that this sought-after vocation cannot fail to have an effect on the geopolitical position of Europe, which risks – as both Kissinger and the aforementioned Michta warned – of becoming a peninsula in Eurasia, the tail of a Eurasian supply chain controlled by China, eventually allowing Beijing to dominate Europe and aim for global hegemony.
The post The EU-China agreement inaugurates the post-Trump: normalization with Beijing gallops, despite everything… appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/laccordo-ue-cina-inaugura-il-dopo-trump-la-normalizzazione-con-pechino-galoppa-nonostante-tutto/ on Thu, 31 Dec 2020 05:02:32 +0000.