China’s charm offensive in Brussels and Berlin has petered out

Berlin, Brussels China’s hopes for a revival of the China-Europe Investment Agreement (CAI) appear to be unfulfilled. Because the agreement has been on hold for around two years, Chinese government officials have been campaigning for weeks in both Brussels and Berlin for the sanctions on both sides to be lifted. This should pave the way for the ratification of the CAI by the European Parliament.

But in Europe and Germany, the offer continues to meet with great skepticism. According to the Foreign Office in Berlin, the EU measures are a reaction to the massive human rights violations in Xinjiang. Sanctions by the European Union would be reviewed at regular intervals based on fixed criteria.

The main subject of the examination is whether improvements in the human rights situation have been identified.

The Chinese government itself had provided the reason for the delay in the approval by the EU parliamentarians. In response to EU sanctions against Chinese political officials for human rights violations in Xinjiang, China issued sanctions in early 2021. However, these went well beyond what Brussels had imposed.

In a sweeping sweep, Beijing not only sanctioned well-known European China researchers and think tanks, but also EU parliamentarians. Since then, one thing has been clear: Only when Beijing lifts the sanctions against Europe can ratification of the investment agreement, which has been laboriously negotiated for almost seven years, even be considered.

Chinese Ambassador to the EU Fu Cong also recently said publicly, “Our proposal is that we lift the sanctions at the same time. And if you don’t think that’s good enough, give us your suggestions and we’re ready to consider them.”

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But the offers made by the Chinese government officials in Berlin and Brussels, intended to tempt the EU, have met with little response. EU diplomats argue that nothing has changed in the repression of the Muslim Uyghur minority in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, which is why the EU is sticking to its sanctions.

Human rights organizations, but also governments, accuse China of committing massive human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Hundreds of thousands are said to have been held in detention camps for months and years simply because of their ethnicity or the practice of their religion, and were also recruited for forced labour. Media reports and research by non-governmental organizations as well as official documents from Chinese authorities and government agencies show this again and again.

The Chinese government denies the allegations. In addition to human rights violations, China is also waging an undeclared economic war against EU member Lithuania. The Chinese government wants to punish the country for upgrading relations with Taiwan. This dispute is also unresolved.

At least there is an exchange between China and Europe again

After almost three years, in which there was little communication between Brussels and Berlin on the one hand and Beijing on the other, there is some movement in relations again – which is not only shown by the latest offer.

German companies involved in China are planning long-postponed visits to the People’s Republic. And at the political level, too, it is important to catch up on the past three years. German-Chinese government consultations are due to take place in Berlin in the coming months, although the exact date has not yet been set.

After initially targeting January, the meeting was postponed. Finally, Beijing will appoint a new government at the National People’s Congress – the previous Prime Minister Li Keqiang will in all probability be replaced by Li Qiang, previously head of the Communist Party in the economic metropolis of Shanghai. There would have been little point in meeting the old team when other people would soon be sitting on the State Council, which is something like China’s cabinet.

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On the one hand, China is trying to calm things down – and on the other hand, it is sticking to old patterns. In an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper at the beginning of January, the Chinese ambassador to Germany harshly criticized the draft of the German government’s China strategy, which is currently being worked on. According to Wu Ken, the paper gives the impression that it is primarily guided by ideology.

Although Chinese officials are more cautious behind closed doors, it is not only the federal government that has become more cautious in relation to China. In Europe, too, there is skepticism: the Europeans have registered that the new Chinese EU ambassador, Fu Cong, does not belong to the hardliner camp, but is more of a multilateralist.

Nevertheless, the EU currently sees little scope for a rapprochement. China’s political fraternization with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Beijing’s refusal to condemn the war of aggression against Ukraine fuel the estrangement.

The Europeans see the People’s Republic as a system rival and are trying to reduce their economic dependency. Especially in the energy sector: minerals that are critical for the success of the energy transition have so far mainly come from China, as have clean-tech products that are just as important.

At the EU summit in Brussels last week, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen showed a diagram according to which between 50 and almost 100 percent of the production capacities for critical goods such as solar cells, wind turbines, heat pumps and electric car batteries are attributable to China. If this continues, the energy transition will lead Europe from dependence on Russia to dependence on China.

Planned trade partnerships with the Latin American Mercosur countries and Indonesia, for example, serve to establish new supply chains and reduce the risk of blackmail. From a Brussels perspective, this is a key lesson learned from the Ukraine war, during the course of which Russia used the energy partnership with Europe as a means of exerting pressure on the EU. The CAI, which would intensify economic exchange with China, is politically hardly in keeping with the times.

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