Germany’s foreign minister gets drawn into the clean up operation after the French president’s controversial trip to Beijing
(Bloomberg) —
At around the time that German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was getting a discreet tour of the surveillance equipment in Beijing on Friday, the Chinese authorities were arresting two human rights activists who had tried to set up meetings with western officials.
Such an overt display of state power left a bleak impression on the delegation from Berlin and may have prompted her public warnings about the way China uses its growing muscle. The other trigger was probably Emmanuel Macron.
As Baerbock prepares to discuss Indo-Pacific tensions with her Group of Seven counterparts in Tokyo Sunday, her tour of east Asia is increasingly becoming subsumed in the extended clean-up operation after the French president’s own visit to China earlier in the month.
Baerbock’s warnings of the “horror” of a potential Chinese move against Taiwan were in stark contrast to Macron’s courtship of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The French leader’s argument that the European Union should avoid being dragged into a dispute with China by the US sparked instant outrage in Washington and across much of the democratic world.
But it also highlighted a fundamental problem: the EU can’t work out what to do about China.
“China smells weakness and fragmentation in Europe, and uses it in its favor,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist for Natixis and a senior fellow at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.
As he pursues his goal for China to become the leading world power by 2049, Xi has been on a diplomatic charm offensive, hosting a string of senior European officials, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The problem for the Europeans is that China over the years has become critical to their economies— German carmakers being a key example — and Beijing has become more assertive on the world stage, most conspicuously in its support for Vladimir Putin in Russia. Indeed, the region’s addiction to Russian energy and its struggle to shake it off after the invasion of Ukraine is a geopolitical cautionary tale.
France and Germany both argue against decoupling from China, and the bloc aims to mitigate its dependencies on Chinese imports. But the EU’s two largest members differ on the detail as they try to work through an extremely complicated balancing act.
Off the back of his trip to Beijing last year, Scholz urged German businesses to reduce their exposure to Asia’s biggest economy and his government has cut back on investment financing. After Macron was given the star treatment at a state banquet he then gave an interview in which was widely seen as encouraging Xi’s ambitions to bring Taiwan back under Beijing’s control.
The criticism, which some argued may have in part been due to how his comments were translated, was particularly acute in central and eastern Europe. It’s not the first time Macron’s thoughts have been lost in translation though.
With French diplomats engaged in an extensive damage limitation exercise, UK officials said that the comments had compromised Western unity. An official in Taipei said those divisions would encourage Chinese aggression. A German diplomat said the Chinese had cited the comments directly when they’d tried to take a firm line on Taiwan.
“The negative press Macron received shows that it is increasingly difficult for a country to take a middle way,” Bloomberg Economics’ chief Asia economist, Chang Shu, said.
Those same tensions were evident at the start of Baerbock’s trip when she visited the giant assembly hall of a German wind-turbine producer in Tianjin. When she was told that wind generators can be installed in six months or less in China, compared with an average seven years in Germany she pointed out that “Of course, we don’t evict local homeowners.”
Later, a Swiss IT expert pointed out the different types of cameras and sensors on the street near the Germany embassy as he explained to Baerbock the scale of surveillance in China and the delegation was briefed on the arrest of the Chinese activists, according to an official. The Chinese embassy in Berlin didn’t respond to requests for comment on the arrests.
Read more:
- Xi Launches Charm Offensive to Repair China’s Tattered Image
- US to Push Against China Economic ‘Coercion’ at G-7 Meeting
- Xi’s Vow of World Dominance by 2049 Sends Chill Through Markets
- German Minister Warns of Taiwan ‘Horror’ in Testy China Visit
As they try to square that circle of a regime that many find distasteful, and a market they can’t dispense with, many European officials will privately agree with the French president’s basic diagnosis: the EU does need to define its own role on the world stage because the US is increasingly focused on its geopolitical duel with China. The problem, one senior European official said, is that Macron and others who push for more so-called strategic autonomy consistently fail to deliver on that promise.
French troops were pushed out of parts of the Sahel under pressure from Russia’s Wagner mercenaries. It’s the US that is fundamentally underwriting the Ukrainian war effort. And across the EU, there’s no consensus on raising defense spending to the levels that would be required to change that.
When it comes to procurement, trade deals and investment, the EU is divided between countries that want an open market and close relations with the US, and those that think Europe should be put first.
And then there’s the way that Macron winds people up.
Several Western diplomats who were sympathetic to his argument said the clumsy and provocative way he’d communicated had made the problem worse. One suggested he is still irked by the US defense alliance with Australia and the UK that led to Canberra scrapping a $58 billion contract for French-built submarines.
Whatever the reasons, it’s making the EU weaker, not stronger, especially when it comes to dealing with China.
“If you share a common market, you cannot have a different position on the biggest trading partner of the EU and Germany,” Baerbock said in Tianjin.
–With assistance from Jenny Leonard, Alex Wickham, Alonso Soto, Michael Nienaber and Zoe Schneeweiss.
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