Handling relations with China, the European Union appears to have a fetish for being Beijing’s doormat.
Brussels has spent years sucking up to Beijing in order to win its foreign investment. That has meant years of turning a blind eye to Chinese cyberespionage and hostile business practices. Years of turning a blind eye to China’s lies about addressing climate change. Years of turning a blind eye to China’s destruction of the sovereign democratic order in Asia.
Coming from an organization that prides itself on serving the democratic rule of law and human rights, this is all pretty embarrassing.
Yet, as China continues to lie and cheat over the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU is struggling to adopt even a slightly tougher approach. Consider the shambles Brussels enjoined with a simple letter this week. Written by the EU’s 27 ambassadors and the bloc’s own ambassador, the letter was designed as a typical EU bow to Beijing. It saluted China’s provision of medical aid (broken or otherwise) and begged for more trade once the crisis passes.
But there was a problem.
As Politico reports, China refused to publish the letter in its state newspaper, China Daily, unless one line was removed — namely, a reference to “the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months.”
If you think that line is the nicest possible way of referencing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s capricious crackdown on coronavirus truths, you’re not alone. Still, even that line was too much for Beijing.
Rather than do the obvious thing and refuse to budge on the letter’s content, however, the European External Action Service (which leads common EU foreign policy action) keeled to the communist throne. Brussels agreed for the letter to be published with the offending line deleted. Like a good useful idiot, the European External Action Service’s top representative for Asia then helpfully tweeted out the Chinese-approved version. Challenged as to why it backed down in the face of communist China’s bullying, the organization said it did so in order to preserve common Brussels-Beijing interests on “climate change and sustainability, human rights, multilateralism, and the global response to the coronavirus.”
This is laugh-out-loud stuff.
That Brussels sees Beijing’s companionship on climate change (dirty coal plants?), human rights (um, Hong Kong? Uighurs in Xinjiang Province?), and multilateralism (the South China Sea?) proves the EU has a very fine pair of sickle and hammer-tinted goggles.
There is one gem of hope here.
While it takes a lot for them to see Beijing as having crossed a line, even France, Germany, and Italy couldn’t stomach this surrender letter. Their embassies published the full version on their websites.
Of course, while Chinese ambassadors are able to reach our wide audiences in the West (see the Chinese ambassador’s letter in the Washington Post this week), China controls what its own citizens see outside of official channels. So, anyone in China who reads state media will think that the EU is totally happy with Xi.
End result: China has gained a huge propaganda win, and the rest of us have gained yet more proof that America is the world’s flawed but still indispensable guardian for democracy.
