European Union leaders agreed to “de-risk and diversify” economic relations away from China despite Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping's attempts to discourage European cooperation with the United States in that arena.
“The European Union will seek to ensure a level playing field, so that the trade and economic relationship is balanced, reciprocal and mutually beneficial,” the European Council declared in a joint statement following a convocation in Brussels. “In line with the Versailles agenda, the European Union will continue to reduce critical dependencies and vulnerabilities, including in its supply chains, and will de-risk and diversify where necessary and appropriate.”
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If that statement renounced any intent “to decouple or to turn inwards,” it still amounted to a rebuff of recent Chinese appeals for Europe to maintain “strategic autonomy” from the U.S. approach to economic competition with Beijing. The Chinese government’s rhetoric has been tailored to appeal to French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s continent-leading business interests, but the council’s approach reflects the wariness of senior officials in Brussels and the trans-Atlantic community’s eastern flank.
“In my opinion, it was very significant that we very quickly agreed on the text in the conclusions, as this shows a clear European unity on China,” European Council President Charles Michel told reporters Friday. "It is a unity we share with our like-minded partners. We have worked with our allies and like-minded partners in this regard.”
Chinese officials tried to forestall this pronouncement last week with a diplomatic tour of Western Europe immediately after Secretary of State Antony Blinken made his long-awaited visit to Beijing. Chinese Premier Li Qiang lobbied against U.S. advice to “de-risk” Western relations with China during a six-day trip in France and Germany.
“China’s development brings opportunities rather than risks to the world, and stability rather than shocks to the global industrial and supply chains,” Qiang told Michel last week. "Both sides have benefited from each other’s development, adhered to strategic autonomy and multilateralism, and had broad consensus on climate change and other global issues.”
The European Council’s pronouncement coincided with an announcement from the Netherlands, where Dutch officials unveiled new restrictions on the export of “advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment” that "can make a key contribution to certain advanced military applications,” as Dutch foreign trade minister Liesje Schreinmacher put it.
"The uncontrolled export of goods and technologies therefore potentially poses national security risks," she said. "The Netherlands bears an extra responsibility in this regard because this country has a unique, leading position in this field.”
Schreinmacher declared the restriction to be “country-neutral,” but it dovetails with a U.S. initiative to curtail the Chinese military’s access to cutting-edge computer chips, to Beijing’s frustration.
“China opposes the U.S.’s overstretching the national security concept, abusing export control tools, using all sorts of pretexts to cajole or coerce other countries into joining its technological blockade against China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Friday.
“These actions of interfering in normal trade between companies through administrative means seriously undermine market rules and the international trade order, disrupt global industrial and supply chains, and serve no one’s interest.”
Many European leaders, however, have come to view Beijing with increasing suspicion in light of the coronavirus pandemic and Xi’s alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“China has now turned the page on the era of ‘reform and opening' and is moving into a new era of ‘security and control,’” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in April. “And to strengthen that security and control leverage, China is openly pursuing a policy of reducing its dependency on the world — that is completely OK; that is their right — but while increasing the world's dependency on itself.”
Xi has hoped that an assiduous cultivation of Western European leaders would impede the formation of a trans-Atlantic economic approach. Macron seemed to raise those hopes during an April trip to Beijing in which he reiterated his ambition for Europe to have “strategic autonomy” from Washington, particularly in the event of a Taiwan crisis that leads to stiff U.S. sanctions on China.
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Yet Macron and the other leaders warned China not to disturb the stability of the Taiwan Strait despite Xi’s ambition to bring the island democracy under communist rule.
“The East and South China Seas are of strategic importance for regional and global prosperity and security,” the council said. “The European Union is concerned about growing tensions in the Taiwan Strait. The European Council opposes any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion.”