EU foreign ministers met yesterday to seek a common approach on lessening Europe’s reliance on China and coaxing Beijing to take a tougher stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Brussels is urging the EU’s 27 nations to get on the same page on how they deal with China as a more assertive Beijing flexes its influence on the world stage.
Speaking at the European Parliament this week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the relations were getting tougher as “rivalry and competition on the side of China have certainly increased.”
Photo: AFP
He backed calls for a “smart derisking” by slashing Europe’s dependence on China for key materials, but there is no appetite to sever all ties with the world’s second-biggest economy.
“There is a desire to avoid confrontation with China, even if disputes are multiplying,” said Elvire Fabry, a researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute think tank.
Most pressing among those disagreements is China’s refusal to condemn its close ally Russia and Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, or to press Russia to stop its attack.
Brussels has enraged Beijing by proposing to restrict exports of sensitive tech to eight Chinese firms suspected of shipping it on to Russia.
On a European tour this week, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) said Beijing would take the “necessary response” if the EU moved ahead with any sanctions.
In Berlin, Qin clashed over Ukraine with German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock, who said that China’s proclaimed “neutrality means taking the side of the aggressor.”
French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna sought to soften the tone when she met Qin by saying that China had an important role to play for “global peace and stability” in efforts to mediate.
On a trip to China last month, French President Emmanuel Macron opened up EU fissures by saying Europe should not automatically follow US policy on Taiwan and should avoid “crises that aren’t ours.”
That stirred fierce criticism from some other European allies, which see the US as a security guarantor against Russia.
Yesterday’s meeting of foreign ministers in Stockholm was not meant to reach any concrete conclusions, but the hope was that the talks could help nudge the EU toward greater unity in its ongoing efforts to grapple with the challenges posed by Beijing.
“The important thing is not to prevent China from becoming a world power, it is to manage how China will use this power,” EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said on Thursday.
The EU officially categorizes China as simultaneously a partner, competitor and rival, and there is no plan to tear up that approach.
However, EU officials say the emphasis could now move increasingly to managing the rivalry rather than working together.
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
RSS