Twenty was the year when Xi Jinping’s geopolitical lawlessness and domestic abuse peaked. Still, the year ended with a free giveaway from the European Union to Beijing in the form of a one-sided, opaque and misleading investment deal. The Europeans have betrayed their American ally, not to mention their own values.
Seven years in the making, but shelved by the pandemic, the deal was urgently closed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen. They insist that the deal simultaneously represents “our interests” while promoting “our core values,” as von de Leyen put it.
But the draft confirms what anyone familiar with China’s behavior over the past decade should know by now: namely that Brussels has sacrificed European values to promote economic interests – marginally.
Yes, the agreement will open new service companies to European investors, hinder technology transfer and add some transparency to state-owned companies and other forms of market manipulation. The EU cites these modest concessions from the Chinese state capitalist apparatus as great victories, but most were already in the offing – and could have been obtained without betraying human rights had the Europeans included the United States as a third partner.
As it stands, the deal will disappoint on its own terms, leaving European entrants to the Chinese economy to complain about an uneven playing field in the industries that open this deal to investment, such as electric vehicles, consumer finance and private hospitals. While the Chinese giants are allowed to raise capital and swim their way home, European companies will largely remain hostage in a manipulated game that puts the thumb of the Chinese state squarely on the scales.
And for what? The EU is essentially ready to denounce its routine human rights sermon as cheap talk in exchange for thicker margins for car manufacturers, consumer goods manufacturers and other largely German multinationals. Meanwhile, the deal does little to counter the mass slavery of its Muslim minorities by the communist regime. At best, it will halt the ongoing efforts of human rights activists and Chinese hawks at the European Parliament to rid the continent’s supply chains of forced Uyghur labor. In the worst case scenario, it will anchor some new European companies in those same bloodstained value chains.
The official text asks China to adhere to a number of provisions of the International Labor Organization which it has already ratified, but does not provide any enforcement mechanisms to monitor behavior on the ground. China is at the same time one of the founders of the ILO and the world capital of modern slavery. So it can only prove pointless for Europeans to get Beijing to ratify additional ILO provisions.
The deal comes just as the China-aggressive Trump administration is leaving. President-elect Joe Biden and his foreign policy coterie, while historically weak for Beijing, have indicated a preference for a concerted, transatlantic approach to China. But Europeans couldn’t wait to see what the new regime in Washington could mean.
The drivers of the deal argue that the EU should not be held accountable for failing to deal with an ally whose own China policy has not been stable across administrations. They also argue that getting caught up in the rivalry between China and the US is not in Europe’s long-term interest. But European duplicity is, or should be, clear to Team Biden, despite the Democrats’ typical concern for European goodwill.
In the post-COVID world, it is unlikely that China’s market fraud and domestic abuse will decrease and even worsen. Against that backdrop, the EU’s race to negotiate a deal says something – something ominous – about Europe’s ‘strategic autonomy’ from America, the buzzword first quoted by French President Emmanuel Macron and now flying around Brussels. .
Yes, the deal won’t go into effect for a year, but two weeks is the only time Biden has to figure out how to respond – not an enviable position for the leader of the free world. Biden might take a page from his predecessor. President Trump’s Chinese skeptical instincts and his distrust of Europeans seem justified: Xi is just as bad as he insisted, and Angela Merkel’s Eurocracy has been exposed as a blob of sell-off.
The democratic West needs one backbone. Let’s hope Biden has it.
Jorge González-Gallarza is an associate researcher at Fundación Civismo.
Twitter: @JorgeGGallarza