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Can Europe and China shape a new world order?
The EU countries also take varying degrees of interest in security questions and human rights. The larger ones give some thought to East Asian security, while many of the smaller ones care little about Taiwan, the JapanChina relationship or the North Korean nuclear problem. Some of the smaller countries in Northern Europe take a strong interest in human rights in China, as do formerly Communist countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic. But many other smaller states see China merely as a commercial opportunity. They are reluctant to support policies or statements – for instance on technology transfer, human rights or Taiwan – that could threaten business opportunities in China.
The rivalry between the big three The bigger states are themselves divided over how to handle China, sometimes because of differing approaches to transatlantic relations. Thus in 200405, when the French and German governments led the campaign to lift the EU arms embargo on China, the British were more susceptible to US pressure to postpone lifting it (see Chapter 4). The arrival in office of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy – both more Atlanticist than their predecessors – has helped to reduce intra EU divisions. But the bigger states, and especially Britain, France and Germany (‘the big three’), still see each other as commercial rivals in China. They believe they are important enough to have their own, significant bilateral relationships. So they are often reluctant to join forces with either the other big memberstates or the EU institutions. “We each seek to undermine the other memberstates in the hope of shortterm commercial advantage, access to the key decisionmakers, and influence,” says a diplomat working for a big EU country in Beijing. “The Chinese are skilled at playing us off against each other.” China exploits these divisions by rewarding what it considers as good behaviour and punishing those governments that do the ‘wrong’ thing. Usually the Chinese government does not go so far as
A partnership that is not strategic
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to deprive the offending government of commercial contracts. For example, when Britain led a group of memberstates to block the lifting of the EU arms embargo in 2005, it did not appear to suffer commercially. But there is always that possibility. Thus in the late 1990s, Denmark’s trade with China dipped perceptibly, after the Danish government supported a United Nations human rights resolution that criticised China. And in the early 1990s, after France had sold frigates to Taiwan, it lost many contracts and was banned from bidding for the construction of subway systems. Any EU government that meets Taiwanese leaders formally rather than informally is liable to face punishment. And the same policy now seems to apply to the Dalai Lama. In October 2007, Angela Merkel met the Dalai Lama in the chancellery in Berlin. As a result, Beijing delayed (but did not scrap) contracts due to be signed with Germany, and it cancelled a series of meetings with the German government. None of Germany’s partners expressed much solidarity with Merkel. And in the German government it is widely believed that, within a few days of Merkel meeting the Tibetan leader, President Sarkozy had called the Chinese leadership to suggest that France could become China’s chief partner in Europe. The big three are reluctant to work through the EU not only because they see each other as rivals, but also because they do not always take the EU seriously as a foreign policy actor. For example, senior officials of the EU and China meet regularly to discuss subjects such as Africa, energy, human rights, illegal immigration and strategic issues. But the British, French and Germans insist on having their own strategic dialogues with China, while the British and the French have their own, separate, Africa dialogues. When we asked an official from the UK Department of International Development why the British needed their own Africa dialogue with China, she replied: “Because we don’t trust the EU, it doesn’t have the expertise.” Similarly, the British and the French have their own dialogues with China on energy, human rights, Taiwan and