China-EU Marriage on the Rocks, but Salvageable

January 12, 2010

By Kerry Brown

So, when last November ties were at least looking a little better between China and the EU, more seasoned observers were hedging their bets on the prospects of things staying calm. Worryingly, China made clear that it needed the EU to join it in a troika with the United States, deflecting talk in some quarters of there being only two powers (the so-called G2) that mattered now. On November 18th, Wen said when meeting US President Barack Obama that China was neither ready nor willing to be pushed into this privileged position. Indeed, four days later he told a visiting group of academics, of which this writer was one, that China had enough problems of its own internally before it could consider extending itself around the rest of the world like a nascent superpower. Yet although the EU was seen as a frustrating, 27-headed beast with extremely complex internal dynamics that often did things that irritated the Chinese (in particular, refusing to grant China market economic status despite having done so for Russia as far back as 2002) the Chinese still saw it as a global counterbalance. And perhaps as a major supplier of technology, aid and assistance the EU can play this role.

But assuming the appointment of EU President Herman Van Rompuy and Foreign Affairs High Representative Catherine Ashton is going to cure the endemic complexities and mysteries of the EU would be to assume too much.

Two recent events have already proved the pessimists right. China’s hard-line position at Copenhagen, where even a final statement was almost scuppered, along with claims that Wen ordered all specific targets and meaningful measures stripped out, left the EU feeling sidelined. British Environment Minister Ed Miliband spoke for many of his EU colleagues when he complained about the lack of flexibility on the part of the Chinese, while the detailed and lengthy discussions that China and the EU had had on environmental issues over the past decade weren’t quite as powerful as many in the EU had thought.

The limited returns for the EU on apparently better political relations were underscored with the execution of British citizen Akmal Shaikh for drug smuggling on December 28th. Regardless of Shaikh’s guilt or mental state, the main issue was that the EU has a policy of demarching on any of its citizens who are given the death penalty, and asking for clemency. Britain in particular had felt that it enjoyed good relations with China, changing its policy on Tibet in November 2008–after 60 years–from recognising ‘China’s special influence in the Tibetan area’ to finally recognising Chinese sovereignty. The British government had also issued a specific strategic document about Anglo-China relations, speaking of their centrality and how many areas the two countries had to work together in, while Britain became the largest attractor of Chinese outward investment during the course of 2009. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown even wrote to President Hu Jintao twice about the Shaikh case.

Yet, despite all of this, Shaikh was executed by lethal injection.

A British writer once referred to Queen Elizabeth I, 500years ago, as `forever holding out her hands to her courtiers, forever disappointed.’ Similarly, even when the Chinese are trying to be nice to the EU and see its value, they are running into problems. So does this mean the EU and China will be permanently disappointed with one another? Will China and the US hog all the limelight, only inviting the EU in when they see fit and only on their terms? Will the EU’s perpetual lack of confidence and its confusion about its own identity doom it forever to the position of the political also ran?

The EU complains that it doesn’t get taken as seriously as it should, and is often berated by critics for never succeeding in translating its economic might into political returns. But in triangular situations, it can sometimes have a critical–and very positive–role. China, the United States and the EU must now seriously consider a formal mechanism that allows them to sit down and talk, as one, about the shared environmental, economic and political challenges that they face.

China probably now knows that the Lisbon Treaty alone has not heralded some new dawn of unified EU activity and policy. That, if it happens at all, will take years to achieve. But at the very least the structures are now there for the three to talk more easily with each other. Perhaps with a triangular, rather than bipolar, approach, the schizophrenia that blights EU-China relations can be cured. It may not lead to a match made in heaven. But it could help them avoid further messy–and largely unsuccessful–divorce proceedings.