On a number of specific issues, such as nuclear non-proliferation and climate change, European and US interests are remarkably aligned. Both are becoming more concerned about Chinese mercantilist trade and currency policies and Beijing’s willingness to support regimes in countries such as Burma, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Iran in return for access to energy and mineral resources. Both see a link between the likelihood that China will rise as a ‘responsible stakeholder’ to progress in domestic political reform and greater respect for human rights. Revealingly, Beijing has consistently gone to great lengths to avoid the discussion of its poor human rights record in any multilateral forum that involves both the US and the EU.
More broadly, Beijing’s diplomats fear international isolation above all else. After all, internal political and strategic documents consistently show that China is acutely aware of its domestic weaknesses and strategic isolation. It still has a GDP per capita outside the top one hundred countries and is distrusted by every major power in the world. While its ‘comprehensive national power’ remains relatively weak, Beijing seeks to avoid overt confrontation and competition with Washington. Despite occasional hubris, China is still committed to Deng Xiaoping’s strategy to ‘bide time, conceal capabilities and rise gradually in order to not raise alarm.’ The fact that Washington and key European capitals have focused on wooing China bilaterally on a number of issues, rather than developing a unified and coordinated diplomatic front before negotiating with China, has been a source of much relief for Beijing.
For Europe to retain its strategic relevance into the future, it needs to disrupt Beijing’s plans for a G2 world that excludes key European capitals. The best way of doing so is to work with Washington and find common strategies to ‘manage’ China’s rise, or at least the consequences of its re-emergence.
The EU sent over 450 delegations to China in 2009 in an attempt to improve its standing and leverage in Beijing. This has brought the continent little success. Rather than looking east, Europe needs to return its gaze westwards across the Atlantic.
John Lee is a Foreign Policy Fellow at the Center for Independent Studies in Sydney and a Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC. His paper, ‘The Fantasy of Taming China’s Rise’ was released by CIS on 6th May: www.cis.org.au
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To summarise, ‘us whities should stick together’
@ bill: thank you for appreciating that point: that the presumption that the West should ‘manage China’s rise’ is both vain and patronising. Can you imagine how the West would feel if ‘third world’ countries sought to manage their rise (read: interfere in their affairs, contain them etc). As Ive said elsewhere, China looks like an aggressor because it is upsetting the status quo, but if you actually examine the status quo, it was reached through massive European aggression and is thoroughly unfair.
Bob
I think Europe should be united under a benovolent military dictatorship aligned with a similar gove’t in the U.S. In our own two societies, we should eliminate the criminals and lazy scum, then turn our joined attention toward China with the goal of destroying it’s internal structure and financial health.
Mladen
First thing Europe needs is tighter integration. With Lisbon Treaty there is legal framework and with financial crisis of whole countries will come motivation for action. Let’s face it, abandonment of Euro and falling apart of EU is not an option. At least not for any country which desires to remain relevant.
Such tightly united Europe can then be Good Cop versus Bad Cop – the USA. And USA must understand that as any good team, those two cops work as equal partners.
For time being, China deals with each problem as they show up. Considering last 200 years of their history, it is completely understanding. And at the moment, EU is not yet focused force, let alone potential enemy to China…
Magnus T.M.
>First thing Europe needs is tighter integration.
No we do not. We need two Europes. A financially disciplined free trade Europe as envisaged by Germany and a separate bureaucratic freeloading Europe as envisaged by France. The two visions are not compatible.
bill
Actually, I think China will “manage” it’s own rise, regardless of what the rest of the world wants, especially Europe. Europe is irrelevant other than being the force that may precipitate the final financial fall of the US.
China holds the US Budget in it’s hands. It is in a “catch 22″ situation that it is trying to get out of by using dollars to buy up minerals, oil, natural gas, land etc., all over the world. These are the materials we will need to rebuild our economy…and they will be under Chinese control.
China doesn’t want to dominate the world, just Asia and will slowly force the US out. Guam may one day be the closest our military will get to China.
Willby
“(and EU President Jose Manuel Barroso)”. Failure! If the writer knows this little about the EU, he really isn’t in the position to say what the biggest economy in the world should or should not do.
Magnus T.M.
The problem with dealing with Europe from a Chinese perspective is that the Europeans can’t agree on anything that China wants. Take for example the arms embargo on China. Despite most European countries having at various times promised to lift it, they have never been able to agree at the same time. Various member countries have constantly been subject to US pressure to backtrack on whatever promises they made. Another example is the Chinese participation in the Galileo project where under US pressure, the European partners essentially kicked China off it despite having paid for a piece of it.
There are simply too many flaws in his article that begs that question if Mr Lee has simply picked the quotes to fit his conclusions. John Lee’s knee jerk hostility to China diminishes the value of his analysis to the point of utter worthlessness.