European disunity on China won’t smooth the path ahead

Brussels has sought to bring the bloc together around a stronger policy towards China, as Beijing’s influence grows across Europe
However, there are clear differences between hawkish Eastern European nations and Western European economies which do more business with China

Andrew Hammond

Published: 7:30pm, 6 Dec 2023

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Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger is widely credited with saying: “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?” This famous question has been repeated often over the years to highlight the lack of a unified foreign policy across the continent.

The implication here is that there could be significant benefits for foreign powers if they could speak to a single interlocutor for the European Union. However, an increasingly common criticism in Europe of China is the opposite: namely, that it favours a splintered EU so that it can “divide and rule” across the continent.

This is one reason the 24th and latest annual China-EU summit will be more important than most. There is an undeniable chill in relations that could see the two sides failing to even issue a joint statement after their summit on December 7.

The summit comes as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and other top EU officials such as foreign policy chief Josep Borrell attempt a unified, bloc-wide stance towards China. Yet, despite its efforts, Brussels is struggling to find common ground on Beijing across all 27 member states.

Top EU officials have become increasingly concerned in recent years about whether China’s interventions in Europe represent a “divide and rule” strategy to undermine the continent’s collective interests. Europe is becoming an important foreign policy focal point for China which had, until the pandemic, enjoyed growing influence across much of the continent.

In eastern and central Europe, China held 16+1 summits aimed at intensifying and expanding cooperation in areas including investment, transport, science, education and culture. In western Europe, Italy was the first and only Group of 7 country to endorse China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The port city of Trieste. Italy endorsed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2019, in part to open up to investment in Italian ports. Photo: Shutterstock

Following the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Brussels has sought to bring the bloc together around a stronger policy towards China. Von der Leyen and Borrell have led on this, even though the European Commission president does not have a formal foreign policy role.

Most recently, both von der Leyen and Borrell have made hard-hitting comments. Von der Leyen said last month that “we must recognise that there is an explicit element of rivalry in our relationship” and that “we must also recognise that China’s views on the ‘global security architecture’ are not by default aligned with ours”.

EU policy on China is clearly moving in a more hawkish direction. Yet, a central challenge for von der Leyen and Borrell is that the 27 member states don’t agree on China.

Despite ‘de-risking’ talk, Scholz’s Germany has not turned away from China

It would be too simplistic to refer to an East-West dichotomy in the continent, in part because Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban favours strong ties with China. Nonetheless, there are clear differences between hawkish Eastern European nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania and their Western European counterparts such as France, Spain and Germany, which do much more business with China.

Perceptions of a divided Europe have also been publicly highlighted by Chinese officials including Fu Cong, the ambassador to the EU. Fu recently said a speech by the European Commission president gave him the impression that “Europe has not formulated a coherent policy toward China”.

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The positions of Germany and France are particularly problematic for Brussels given that both want to continue engaging extensively, economically, with China. The long-standing and deep business ties that Berlin has with Beijing are widely documented so it is no surprise that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been more equivocal than von der Leyen and Borrell.

However, what has surprised many is the relatively soft stance that French President Emmanuel Macron has taken, including during a visit this year to China with von der Leyen. Remarkably, Macron took along a 50-strong business delegation, a far larger group than the 12 CEOs who accompanied Scholz to China last year.

Perhaps most surprising of all was Macron’s shift on Taiwan. Whereas von der Leyen asserted during the trip that “stability in the Taiwan Strait is of paramount importance” and that “threat of use of force to change the status quo is unacceptable”, Macron marked his departure from China by describing Taiwan as a crisis that is “not ours” and as a topic on which Europe should not become “America’s followers”.

Taken together, this forms a challenging backdrop to this week’s summit. It is not just that EU-China relations are frozen, but that they could yet go from bad to worse in 2024.

Andrew Hammond is an associate a LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics