Twenty-twenty was the year in which Xi Jinping’s geopolitical lawlessness and internal abuses appeared. However, the year ended with a free European Union gift to Beijing in the form of a unilateral, opaque and misleading investment agreement. Europeans have betrayed their American ally, not to mention their own values.
After seven years of work, but suspended by the pandemic, the agreement was reached by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen. They insist that the agreement simultaneously supports “our interests” while “promoting our core values,” as Von de Leyen said.
But the draft confirms what anyone familiar with China’s behavior over the past decade should know: that Brussels has sacrificed European values to promote economic interests – marginally.
Yes, the agreement will open up new service industries for European investors, prevent technology transfers and add some transparency to state-owned companies and other forms of market arrangement. The EU welcomes these modest concessions from China’s state capitalist apparatus as major victories, but most of them were already in full swing – and could have been achieved without betraying human rights if Europeans had included the United States as a third partner.
Indeed, the transaction will disappoint on its own terms, leaving European newcomers to China’s economy to complain about unequal playing conditions in the industries this agreement opens up for investment, such as electric vehicles, consumer finance and private hospitals. While China’s giants are allowed to raise capital and judge their way home, European companies will remain largely hostage in a rigged game in which the Chinese state’s thumb is placed directly on the scales.
And for what? The EU is essentially prepared to present its routine human rights sermons as cheap talks in exchange for heavier margins for carmakers, consumer goods manufacturers and other German multinationals. Meanwhile, the agreement does little to counter the mass enslavement of its Muslim minorities by the communist regime. At best, it will kill the continued efforts of Chinese human rights and falconers in the European Parliament to escape the mainland’s supply chains of Uyghur forced labor. In the worst case, it will incorporate some new European companies into the same blood-stained value chains.
The official text calls on China to comply with a number of provisions of the International Labor Organization that it has already ratified, while providing no enforcement mechanism for monitoring behavior on the ground. China is both a founding signatory of the IOM and the world capital of modern slavery. Thus, the Europeans who make Beijing ratify additional ILO provisions may prove meaningless.
The deal comes just as the shocking Chinese Trump administration is on its way. President-elect Joe Biden and his foreign policy college, while having a historical view of Beijing, have indicated that they prefer a common transatlantic approach to China. But Europeans could not wait to see what the new Washington regime might mean.
Proponents of the agreement argue that the EU should not be held accountable for not partnering with an ally whose own Chinese policy has not been stable between administrations. They also argue that being caught up in the China-US rivalry is not in Europe’s long-term interest. But European duplicity is or should be evident to the Biden team, despite the typical Democrat call for European goodwill.
In the post-COVID world, China’s market arrangements and domestic abuses are unlikely to diminish or even worsen. In this context, the EU’s race to reach an agreement says something – somewhat ominous – about Europe’s “strategic autonomy” from America, the key word first floated by French President Emmanuel Macron and now flying around Brussels.
Yes, the agreement will not take effect for another year, but two weeks are all the time Biden needs to figure out how to react – not an enviable position for the leader of the free world. Biden could take a page from his predecessor. President Trump’s Chinese skeptical instincts and distrust of Europeans seem justified: Xi is as bad as he insisted, and Angela Merkel’s Eurocracy has been exposed as a sales stain.
The democratic West needs a single backbone. Let’s hope Biden has it.
Jorge González-Gallarza is an associate researcher at Fundación Civismo.
Twitter: @JorgeGGallarza