cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/61006597
“We want to work on issues of common interest, promoting trade and investment in a balanced way to benefit the development of our countries from our respective visions, and we want to foster closer ties between our societies,” Sanchez told Xi.
“We want to work on issues of common interest […],” Sanchez told Xi.
Did they talk also about China’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine? The transnational repression of exiled dissidents by China across Europe? The secrecy of agreements that leads to disaster like the one in Novi Sad, Serbia, that should make it impossible to held someone accountable?
The Chinese government is not interested in someone else’s interest. Even Mr. Sanchez will have to recognize that China is a threat to Europe, and it behaves so, not matter how much investments his country receives.
At the moment i think China is the lesser of two evils. Yeah, its not a democracy and China does things that benefits China, but it has one thing that the OTHER evil has lost recently: Predictability.
At the moment i think China is the lesser of two evils. Yeah, its not a democracy and China does things that benefits China, but it has one thing that the OTHER evil has lost recently: Predictability.
This is satire, right? Just because the US is becoming ever more like China does not mean that China becomes better. Europe must diversify and gain more independence without one or two large trading partners. Countries like Spain or Hungary are heading in the wrong direction, but there is much underway in Europe to achieve a higher level of autonomy.
Australia’s is the most balanced approach imo, it declined Beijing’s proposal to work together to counter U.S. tariffs, saying instead it would continue to diversify its trade and lower its reliance on China, its largest trading partner.
China is ensnaring Europe only for its own advantage, and this can be seen not only through Beijing’s support of Russia’s war:
China is wooing Europe with technology, investments - and a smile. But anyone who looks behind China’s rhetoric will recognize the conditions: no criticism, no questions, no objections […]
Human rights? Tibet? Xinjiang? Are elegantly omitted. Anyone who raises them is either a “gangster” financed by the USA or a naïve idealist. [Victor Gao, ex-interpreter to politician Deng Xiaoping and now Beijing’s mouthpiece that promotes China’s line in the West] prefers to sell the high-speed train network, the next 6G expansion and the bubbling growth figures. - Problems? “Of course there are,” he says - and immediately changes the subject.
Addition:
A Europe-China tariff axis would be a dead end
It’s difficult to overstate just what a watershed moment this was for Europe (and one that China, with its globalization happy talk, still seems not to have absorbed). Once the mask has slipped, the illusion can’t be seen again. The US may be acting in an unfriendly manner right now, but at least it doesn’t have a historical dedication to the subjugation of liberal democratic freedoms — and there is always the chance that it will return to its senses at some point. What such hopes can Europe have for Communist China?
Expediency dictates there will be some cooperation between Europe and China, but don’t mistake it for anything more profound or longer lasting. Some things are worth more than an extra battery plant or two.