The Diplomat: China Doesn’t Understand Europe, and It Shows

 While his tour was designed to improve China’s post-pandemic image in Europe, some of Wang’s statements only made things worse for China. In Norway, while answering a question about the Nobel Peace Prize and Hong Kong, Wang said that China won’t allow the politicization of the Nobel Prize by interfering in China’s internal affairs — a response that many in the West read as a Chinese threat against awarding the Nobel Prize to Hong Kong protesters. Later, while in Germany, Wang criticized the Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil’s visit to Taiwan and warned that it would incur a “heavy price” — another threat against a European country for doing something considered normal in a democratic state.[...]

China’s run of European mistakes started in 2012, when it decided to set up the 16+1 mechanism with the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, among them both EU members and non-members. Back then, China’s decision was watched with suspicion in Brussels and with every step China has taken in the CEE region the European Union’s fear of division has increased. While the EU seems to have gotten over the 2018 Visegrad (V4) moment, when China inaugurated a V4+China format for meetings with Hungary, Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia, and Wang even praised the V4 as the EU’s “most dynamic force,” things changed a lot in 2019. Two crucial moments were Italy’s decision to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Greece’s addition to the 16+1. [...]

Moments like these have shown that China doesn’t understand the EU at all. While world powers no longer create agreements like the Treaty of Tordesillas, the idea of spheres of influence still exists in their minds. Sixteen formerly communist CEE countries teaming up with a communist great power set off alarm bells in Brussels. The EU doesn’t want any new “Berlin Walls” and it definitely doesn’t want to swap out Russian influence with Chinese in the CEE region, creating a new Iron Curtain. The European Union’s fear of division was mainly generated by China, which failed to understand how sensitive and important this subject is for Brussels. [...]

Sometimes, China doesn’t even seem to understand the basics of the European Union. The EU is a supranational entity, which receives its mandate from all 27 EU member-states, yet remains separate from the national institutions of each member state. The members of the European Parliament, although they come from each EU country, represent not their countries, but the EU. China’s failure to grasp the bloc’s basic structure became clear when it scolded the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after an Estonian member of the European Parliament went to Taiwan.

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The Conversation: How China lost central and eastern Europe

Bulgaria is not the only country in the region to have qualms about China. In the Czech Republic, Prague city council ended its sister-city relationship with Beijing in October 2019 in favour of a partnership with Taipei. The president of the senate then announced plans to visit Taiwan in August in defiance of China.

In May, the Lithuanian foreign minister called for Taiwan to be reinstated to the World Health Organization. The same month, CEE officials were among signatories of a protest letter against China’s introduction of national security legislation in Hong Kong. [...]

First, China has not fulfilled the lavish promises it made to the region for large-scale investments. Chinese foreign direct investment in the EU peaked in 2016 at US$43 billion, then plummeted back to 2012 levels in 2019, with the expectation that 2020 would be even lower. [....]

Second, growing frustration with their marginalisation has led CEE countries to reflect on their political identity. In particular, the wave of recent protests in Hong Kong brought back memories of their own fight against Soviet control. Hongkongers’ use of tactics developed by eastern-European dissidents – such as the Lennon Wall and the Baltic Way – resonated in the region. [...]

Third, CEE countries have grown wary of the political risks associated with their bonhomie with China, amid growing criticism from the EU and US over the past few years. For some, this reassessment has been associated with the tech cold war between the US and China. Following pressure from Washington, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Estonia have indicated they will ban Chinese firm Huawei from the construction of their 5G networks.

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Al Jazeera: The End of China Inc? (Sep 16, 2016)

There's a magic formula to becoming a millionaire in China - borrow big to earn big.

For years, individuals, state-owned companies and municipalities have taken massive loans to chase the Chinese dream.

Now it's payback time, but a severe economic slowdown means many are struggling to pay their debts.

Bloomberg: As U.S. Retires From World Leadership, China and Germany Step Up

The U.S. was also isolated on climate change at a May summit of the smaller Group of Seven club in Italy, where the final communique split six-to-one on the issue. This time, Trump risks finding himself alone against a united front of European allies, neighbors such as Canada and Mexico, and America’s former Cold War foes on the two biggest summit items.

As the previous and current hosts, China’s President Xi Jinping and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel would in any case have worked together on the G-20 agenda. Yet three visits to Germany by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to date, the latest just last month, suggest the two nations are aligned on stepping more broadly into a space that the U.S. has, at least temporarily, left vacant under Trump’s presidency. [...]

That format for climate change negotiations disappeared with Trump’s election. A new vanguard group comprising Canada, China and the EU met for the first time in May. A bilateral China-Germany working group on climate change met in Berlin last week, when each side jointly re-committed to take “an ambitious” approach to implementing Paris agreement goals, and to press that collective approach in Hamburg. [...]

Merkel is aware of the dangers of allowing China to peel Germany away from the EU, creating a decidedly unequal partnership between countries that have very different political systems and few shared values. Interviewed in this week’s edition of the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche, Merkel backed French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for EU governments to be able to do more to block foreign purchases of important companies.

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Vox: Trump pulling out of the Paris climate agreement is great news … for China

With the US stepping away from its role as a leader of the global fight against climate change, Beijing is already moving to fill the void, giving it a chance to benefit both diplomatically and economically. [...]

After Trump withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, China inserted itself into trade talks among other nations disappointed by America’s reversal. As Canada and Mexico have felt spurned by Trump during the runup to renegotiating NAFTA, China has emerged as a more reliable trading prospect. [...]

In a statement to the press, Miguel Arias Cañete, the European Union commissioner on climate action and energy, made the point even more forcefully: "No one should be left behind, but the EU and China have decided to move forward. Our successful cooperation on issues like emissions trading and clean technologies are bearing fruit. Now is the time to further strengthen these ties to keep the wheels turning for ambitious global climate action.” [...]

To make that a little more concrete, let’s take something like China’s jaw-droppingly ambitious One Belt, One Road initiative. It’s a Chinese-funded infrastructure project designed to connect China to 64 countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa that make up around 60 percent of the world’s population.

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