BRUSSELS – The European Union has entered into a trade agreement with China, believing that involvement in Beijing was the best way to change its behavior and make it a dedicated stakeholder in the international system. But that was seven years ago.
The deal was quietly concluded in the last weeks of last year. By that time, China had changed and so had the world. The trans-Atlantic relationship has been damaged by President Trump, with new doubts in Europe about American stability and in America about Europe’s ambitions.
The timing – with a newly aggressive China considered a strategic competitor for the United States and a few weeks before Joseph R. Biden jr. President – opened the European Union to questions and criticism from analysts and especially US officials, that the deal was a diplomatic and political mistake.
It concluded in the midst of China’s repression of Hong Kong and Xinjiang and accepted vague Chinese promises to stop the use of forced labor. This raises doubts about Europe’s willingness to respond to Mr. Pray to work with him on a joint strategy for Beijing. And it gave China a major victory, where the agreement was seen as a great success for President Xi Jinping before the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party and the confirmation of its power in the new world.
“For the trans-Atlantic relationship, it’s a slap in the face,” said Philippe Le Corre, a Chinese scholar affiliated with Harvard’s Kennedy School and the Carnegie Endowment – especially after Europeans called in mid-November on the incoming Biden government to work. with Europe on a joint approach to China.
“It has already damaged the trans-Atlantic relationship,” he said. Le Corre said before Mr. Biden even accepts the office and whether it will eventually be ratified by the European Parliament.
European officials say the timing was not deliberate, but that it was suddenly due to last-minute concessions by Mr. Xi.
But there is no doubt that the agreement has long been a priority for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, partly because of the large German bet on the Chinese market and partly because she strongly believed that engagement, not confrontation, was the best policy for was a decrease. West in the face of a rapidly rising China.
For me. Merkel was the cornerstone of her own long march with Beijing and concluded a turbulent German presidency of the European Union, with an unexpected success just before the Portuguese took over on 1 January.
The agreement will benefit German companies the most, while also giving an indication of European interests, which are not identical to American companies – more closely to what everyone expects it to be a lasting bitterness and mistrust that the Trump- presidency caused.
“The last four years of Trump have left a stain on Germany and Merkel in particular,” he said. Le Corre said. “There is great disappointment and some unknowns about Biden, and the 74 million who voted for Trump shows that the situation in the US is far from settled,” he said. “The Chinese said, ‘Grab it if you can’ at the end of her presidency.”
Although the text of the agreement has not yet been published, there are certain concessions for European affairs similar to those that Mr. Trump in his own phase has reached one agreement with China, Mr. Le Corre said.
Whether the Chinese commitments will be met is an open question, as well as whether the EU agreement will be ratified by the European Parliament next year, given the outrage over human rights violations, including the arrest on Wednesday of dozens of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.
Janka Oertel, director of the Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, said the agreement was modest but “less important than timing and politics.” Whether it is ever ratified or not, “for politics and optics the damage has already been done.”
There has been only modest criticism in Germany, certainly compared to the heated debate over the handling of the coronavirus and vaccines, she said. However, there are persistent questions about whether Merkel’s China policy of silent engagement is no longer valid or should be the model for the future. Germany’s attitude towards Huawei was also softer than many of its European neighbors.
“There is tone deafness in Germany and in Brussels over this as a political victory for China,” she said. Oertel said. Yet she and others ask a more fundamental question: ‘whether you can conclude a treaty with China and rely on it,’ she said. “But if you question it, you question the way we and the European Union do business.”
The whole deal could easily have been scrapped if largely outdated, she said, or could have been negotiated after Mr. Biden took office, when there would be ‘more leverage and more trans-Atlantic leverage’.
The divided reaction in Germany “shows that something has changed in our perception of China, that our risk assessment is much more sober, and that the hope for Chinese transformation is no longer the same as when Merkel started,” said Daniela Schwarzer, the director of the German Council for Foreign Relations.
At the same time, she said Germany’s persistent push for such an agreement, despite tensions with Washington and with other Europeans who outraged the haste, shows a kind of realism.
“It shows everything to the extent that foreign policy has to take into account the way our economy is built,” she said. Germany’s export-based economy and its need for reliable supply chains “all limit the scope of foreign policy options vis-à-vis China.”
By law, Biden appointers may not trade with foreign counterparts before the inauguration. But Jake Sullivan, who will be national security adviser, warned Europeans not to rush in. A Twitter message on December 22, saying the new team would “welcome early consultations with our European partners on our general concerns about China’s economic practices.”
That soft warning was ignored. But only last Sunday was Mr. Sullivan reconciles in a CNN interview. He said Mr. Biden’s aim was early discussion with European allies “out of mutual respect” to work out a common agenda for Chinese trade practices.
“Our goal is to go out and sit down immediately – not just on the issue of China, but to work out the economic differences we have so that we can end the multifarious trade war,” he said.
But Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution said European officials had been harmed by describing the agreement as part of their quest for ‘strategic autonomy’, a policy pursued by President Emmanuel Macron of France that irritates many US policymakers. .
The paradox of the Biden election, François Heisbourg, a French security analyst, said that the European debate on strategic autonomy no longer depends on Trump’s madness, but on the uncertainty of where the United States is going and the security of China. . . ”
But the way this deal was done, he said, “in the silence of late December and with a minimum of discussion, it seems to have been done the cunning way, and it stinks.”
Wright said the deal would feed those in the Biden camp who believe Europeans have self-interest and cannot be truly reliable partners. “Some are skeptical that Europe and especially Germany will deliver, while some think, ‘Let’s go all out with them and there’s a good chance they will deliver. “But that tilts the argument. ”
German officials explain that Europe merely signed a long agreement when China finally tackled long-standing issues, Schwarzer said. “It’s true. But it was also a choice to do so before Biden came in, and it’s advisable why it was considered strategically smart.”
“The trans-Atlantic angle has not been honestly debated,” she said, “and for trans-Atlantic relations it will remain a bitter taste for Biden.”