Something is moving between China and Europe. The trip of the Chinese president Xi Jinping to Moscow and the subsequent trips to Beijing by the Spaniard Pedro Sánchez, the Frenchman Emmanuel Macron, the head of the European Commission Úrsula Von der Leyen and the chancellor of the bloc Josep Borrell show that without fully accepting the peace plan Chinese for Ukraine, the Europeans want to maneuver so that the Asian country do not take the step of sending weapons to Russia.
China wants to mediate, is uncomfortable with war and has managed to prevent Europe from outright rejecting its peace plan, even though it is clearly leaning towards Moscow’s position. And Europeans are hesitant because they are divided between those who want to maintain an independent relationship with China and those who prefer to align themselves fully with the United States.
The summit on Thursday and Friday was the forum for discussing these relations after years without doing so, a debate on the geopolitics that could mark European foreign policy in the coming years and the future of the war in Ukraine in the medium term.
Enemy or “strategic rival”?
What is China for Europe? Official European documents from before the pandemic say it is a “strategic rival”.
He’s not as much of an enemy as he might be to the United States, but that rivalry is recognized.
What role should Europe play at a time of growing confrontation between China and the United States? They prefer the major European countries (Germany, Spain, France, Italy). maintain some degree of independence from Washington.
If the United States is undoubtedly the preferred ally and no European chancellery doubts it (except for the usual outpourings of Hungarian diplomacy), China you can be a partner in some essential matters such as international trade or the fight against the climate crisis.
Other governments among the 27 believe that the war in Ukraine changes the paradigm and that the world is moving towards a division into blocs in which the European Union must be on the same line as Washington. They are governments like the Baltic or the Polish one. In part also Dutch and Scandinavian, although not closed to Europe who speak alone with China.
The debate between the 27, says a diplomatic source, has fundamental agreements. China wants allies to counter Western powers and that is what Russia is for. The EU has invited the Secretary General of the United Nations, the former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, to the summit, a man who has the task of keeping alive a multilateralism that the logic of blocks calls into question.
The 27 agree with Guterres that they prefer a rules-based world. The European Union is the largest economic and commercial bloc on the planet and all that is world disorder hurts it. He prefers that order to a world that moves according to the law of the fittest, a scenario in which he has to align himself with Washington.
Which other countries and regions prefer such a world, Europeans wonder? And they look to Latin America, Southeast Asia, Oceania, certain African countries. If Russia has placed itself in the position of military enemy through the war and there is no question of the fraternal relationship with the United States, Europeans are still looking for how to relate to China, but they are not all on the same line, so the debate in this summit was even more important in trying to close ranks.
Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sánchez go to China
Waiting for the impressions that Sánchez and Macron will bring from Beijing, the others wonder if the line should be the German one (which tries in every way to maintain a commercial relationship of dimensions that it does not have with anyone else outside the European Union ) or if, as the German Úrsula Von der Leyen did in Washington, we should support the US ban on exporting certain technological products to Beijing. Defining those first numbers will give a direction sign.
The president of the European Council, former Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, told the European Parliament last week that faced with the rivalry between China and the United States for planetary leadership in the coming decades, Europeans will not be “equidistant”.
Michel assured: “We are a solid, loyal and faithful ally of the United States”. But this is not an obstacle, Michel continued, to recognizing that China is indispensable and that it is necessary to “dialogue” with the Chinese.
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Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.