China endorsed Russia’s militaristic demands of the West on Friday. The move by Xi Jinping’s regime should serve as a long-overdue wake-up call to the European Union. Namely, a wake-up call that Communist China cannot exist both as Europe’s respected partner and its complicated competitor.
Agreeing to a joint communique opposing NATO’s expansion and demanding that no country make decisions “at the expense of the security of other states,” Xi has firmly set China in Russia’s corner. Xi’s stance is highly significant.
After all, Russia is demanding that NATO permanently rule out accepting any future members, whether they be Sweden, Finland, Georgia, or Ukraine. This is clearly incompatible with the principle of democratic sovereignty. The joint Sino-Russian communique’s demand that no country make decisions “at the expense of other states” is a further reproach of European interests. That language underlines Russia’s demand that Ukraine must not take actions with which Russia disagrees.
Put simply, China has now openly endorsed a Russian perspective that cuts at the heart of the European Union’s very political identity. Yet look at the EU’s policy toward China and you’d never know it.
For German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, EU partners can go to hell if supporting them means risking a few car exports to China (a view that Hungary’s Viktor Orban apparently shares). President Emmanuel Macron of France has at least pushed back against the worst edges of Chinese intimidation, but even he is reluctant to take a truly robust stand for European values. Fearing Chinese ire, Macron rejected a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics as an “insignificant” proposal.
While it’s true that the European Parliament takes a more skeptical stance toward China, the Macron-Scholz penchant for giving Beijing a pass deserves more scrutiny. After all, if the leaders of the EU’s two most powerful nations are unwilling to look at Xi’s action and see it for what it is, an endorsement of aggression and intimidation against European interests, how on Earth can they defend the EU’s credibility as a political entity?
The answer is, they cannot.
