The EU recently vetoed a proposal to lift the arms-sales embargo against China and signed a proposal calling on China to remove the missiles targeted at Taiwan. However, during the recent visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), French President Jacques Chirac tried hard to curry favor with China by expressing opposition to Taiwan's referendum.
These entirely different and conflicting phenomena have reminded us that we should pay attention to significant changes in the EU's China policy. Among them, several developments are worthy of our attention.
The EU is attempting to make China one of its global strategic partners. This policy has been directed and formulated by a few core countries such as France, Germany and Italy. Last October, France and China even agreed to develop an all-round strategic partnership. France's attempts to sway the EU's China policy are quite evident.
The partnerships established between the EU and China to rival the US' unilateralism in dealing with global affairs have had several obvious consequences.
For example, some countries in the EU as well as China opposed using military force against Iraq.
Also, when the euro was launched, China promised to convert 40 percent of its foreign exchange reserves into the euro and emphasized the necessity of pluralizing global currencies.
Finally, in the Sino-EU summit meeting held recently, both sides decided to expand economic cooperation and set a target trade volume of 200 billion euros by 2010.
What deserves our special attention is the new triangular relationship taking shape between the EU, China and ASEAN. This is evident in the conference attended by European financial ministers last September when the trio jointly refused to support US attempts to pressure China on
the yuan.
However, the EU has yet to map out consistent policies toward China, especially regarding human rights and China's relations with Taiwan. On the contrary, contradictory policies are currently being formulated within the bloc.
Among the EU's internal organizations, the EU Commission tends to forge alliances with China. But the European Parliament chooses to boycott China on grounds of its human rights abuses. Recently it even passed several resolutions friendly to Taiwan.
The policy shift integrating politics with economics has led to a more divided China policy inside the EU. The EU used to adopt a pragmatic policy that separated human rights from trade. But in recent years the European Parliament demanded these two issues be linked, emphasizing that China must improve its human rights record before the EU will consider lifting the ban on arms sales to China.
In the past, the EU insisted
that the bottom line was to maintain peace and military
balance between Taiwan and China. However, several European countries appear to be using Taiwan-China relations as a political bargaining chip in exchange for economic interests. What France did this time serves as an example.
The French government wants to act as a vanguard in the EU
to win over the biggest share of business opportunities China may allocate to Europe.
Even though China will become the center of the EU's East Asia policy, Taiwan need not challenge or fear the EU developing global strategic partnerships with China.
Instead, it should persuade the EU to play a neutral role and a mediator in cross-strait relations, and push the union to de-link its global strategic planning from Taiwan-China relations. Taiwan must persuade the EU that it can protect its economic interests without giving in to China on cross-strait relations.
Nor should Taiwan overly fear France's unilateral tilt toward China. But the government must closely observe as China policy becomes an important diplomatic agenda for the EU. As long as the EU does not draw up policies that jeopardize the balance of power between Taiwan and China in the short term, it is not disadvantageous to make the Taiwan issue a focus on the European stage.
Hao Pei-chih is an assistant professor of public administration and policy at National Taipei University.
Translated by Jackie Lin
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