Meeting with Xi Jinping of China on Monday, the European Union’s two top officials again proved their unwillingness to address China’s deception-aggression policy epidemic.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel met with Xi via video conference. But the dynamic was the same as in all of the previous in-person meetings. China lied, the EU made a few pathetic gestures, and then both sides stuck to business as usual.
The subsequent EU press conference proves as much.
Addressing China’s new Hong Kong security law, which shreds the Sino-British treaty’s stipulation that the city’s democratic rule of law be preserved until 2047, Von Der Leyen was circumspect. “For the European Union,” she said, “human rights and fundamental freedoms are non-negotiable. We always raise our concerns, so was it today too, and insist on having a view on these topics.”
Views, sure, but no threat of any consequences if China introduces the law.
This isn’t surprising from Von Der Leyen or her colleague, Michel. In their previous respective roles as German defense secretary and Belgian prime minister, the two officials further hollowed out their already hollow armed forces.
Still, it would be unfair to blame these officials alone. They’re simply following in a not-so-proud EU foreign policy tradition that when the going gets tough, the EU gets really quiet. That’s not to say we should simply shrug our shoulders and accept the EU’s failure to hold China to account. Because what we’re seeing here is how much the EU truly values those human rights values it claims define it.
To her credit, Von Der Leyen was at least honest about why the EU is practically unconcerned with China’s human rights record. Take the very next words offered after her comment that “We always raise our concerns, so was it today too, and insist on having a view on these topics.”
“Of course, we discussed trade and investment.”
Of course.
While Von Der Leyen then lamented Chinese failures to “follow up” on prior commitments to trade more equitably, she called for “more ambition on the Chinese side in order to conclude negotiations on an investment agreement.” The translation is that with more investment, Xi can buy EU silence on Hong Kong, on China’s coronavirus deceptions, on its use of Huawei as a signals intelligence service, and on its imperialism in the South China Sea. China runs concentration camps, uses servile labor, and is trying to turn the global economy into its own little feudal empire. But billions more in annual investment will be enough to make it all go away.
Note the sharp contrast here between the Trump administration’s robust threat of sanctions over Hong Kong and the EU’s big nothing. It’s really quite sad — except not for China.
A crowing People’s Liberation Army-Daily newspaper article welcomed Von Der Leyen and Michel’s cowardly performance on Monday. It celebrated their stated willingness to “strengthen cooperation with China on vaccine research and development, resumption of production and production, expand bilateral trade scale, promote more cooperation in a wide range of fields such as green and low-carbon, digital economy, and reach an EU-China investment agreement as soon as possible to overcome the impact of the epidemic and promote efforts to recover the world economy.”
It’s a joke with a lesson: For those who seek freedom, for all our flaws, America remains the indispensable global force for positive action.
Watch the relevant part of the press conference below.
