How should Europe behave with China?
Today the challenge is not to bet on China but on Europe, which must show itself worthy of the new world equilibrium that is being created. Federico Guiglia's notebook
We don't know if it was just a gaffe, and a very serious one, or an escaped voice from the Sen: even more serious. What is certain is that the statements of the Chinese ambassador in Paris, Lu Shaye, according to which the countries of the former Soviet Union "are not sovereign", as well as having caused a political-diplomatic uproar in Europe, forcing the Beijing authorities to clarify that their representative had expressed himself in a personal capacity and that in any case that is not China's position, raises an unavoidable question: the relationship of our Continent with the nation-continent inhabited by 1.4 billion people and by the irrepressible, even if very contradictory economic, commercial and technological development.
A country that aspires to become what it already is: a strategic and military power in the world. And who intends to count more and more not only in his immense backyard, Asia, but wherever there is a hole to be able to invest and therefore command, from Africa to South America.
Westerners know this well, as they continue to turn to China pleading the cause of its mediation with Putin, so as to induce him to end the unfortunate war against Ukraine and its dramatic effects for the population bombed for more than a year. But very negative effects also for the Europeans, who are paying the economic cost, the geopolitical risk and the nuclear intimidation of that violation of every right.
IS CHINA INTENDING TO MEDIATE WITH PUTIN OR NOT?
Despite the doubts of the US , Beijing can do a lot. But do you want to do?
The ambiguous relations between Xi Jinping and Putin encourage pessimism, i.e. that Moscow's invasion of Ukraine is seen by Beijing as the precedent for Taiwan, the equally independent Pacific island as the it was Ukraine, which China is eager to incorporate into its territory. That is why any Chinese reference to "sovereignty" immediately sets off the free world's red alert.
The great enigma that China represents today requires a unified response from the EU. Which can no longer deal with the giant of Asia in no particular order, each nation aiming only for its own business on the silk road.
Today the challenge is not to bet on China, but on Europe, which must show itself worthy of the new world equilibrium that is being created. Even with the denied statements about the countries that have freed themselves from the USSR and with the long silences about the country that has not yet freed itself from Russia.
Published in L'Arena di Verona, Il Giornale di Vicenza and Bresciaoggi
www.federicoguiglia.com
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/cina-europa/ on Sun, 07 May 2023 05:14:48 +0000.