Europe Sees China Through Russian Lens, and Beijing Is Not Happy

As the leaders of major Western democracies and their allies meet for two consecutive summits this week in Europe, their focus is clear: keeping up the pressure on Russia as its brutal attack on Ukraine enters its fifth month.

But another country also gained prominence at these meetings: China. And Beijing is not happy about it.

For the first time, China’s “challenge” is expected to appear in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) “Strategic Concept,” scheduled to be unveiled at the bloc’s summit in Madrid, Spain, this week. The document, last updated in 2010, outlines the security challenges facing the alliance while outlining a course of action.

And on Tuesday, the main democratic G7 economies included harsh language against China in their own statement, days after launching an infrastructure investment plan to fight China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

European leaders have grown increasingly wary of China in recent years and those views have hardened in recent months as Beijing has repeatedly refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and strengthened its ties to the Kremlin.

There are still differences between countries on how to treat China, observers say. Some NATO members want to ensure that the focus remains squarely on Russia, while the United States – by far the most powerful member of the bloc – called China the “most serious long-term challenge to the international order”.

But this week’s developments, which show that China is more important than ever on these bodies’ agendas, signal a growing alignment between the US and its partners.

They also mark a significant setback for Beijing, which has tried to drive a wedge between US and European positions on China, observers say.

“The combination of the type of language used by the G7 and [a inclusão formal da China] in NATO strategic documents is really a blow to [a China] and something they hoped and wished they could avoid,” said Andrew Small, a senior fellow on the Asia Program at The German Marshall Fund US.

“It is an exceptionally strong period in terms of transatlantic cooperation and that translates to China in ways that they are very concerned about,” he said.

On the agenda

China’s concerns became clear this week when its foreign ministry backed down on the possibility of being named a “systemic challenge” in NATO’s new strategic vision, which is due to be approved during the bloc’s summit, which began on Tuesday. .

Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Tuesday: “China pursues an independent foreign policy of peace. It does not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs or export ideology, much less engage in far-reaching jurisdiction, economic coercion, or unilateral sanctions. How can China be labeled a ‘systems challenge’? ”

“We solemnly ask NATO to immediately stop spreading false and provocative statements against China,” he said, adding that NATO should “stop trying to disrupt Asia and the whole world after it has disrupted Europe.”

But that rhetoric — blaming NATO for the “disarray” in Europe — is part of what is driving a shift in European prospects, analysts say, as Beijing has refused to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine, including the killing of civilians, while actively blamed the US and NATO for provoking Moscow.

China “very quickly and clearly aligned itself — at least in words, not so much in deeds — with Russia,” while transatlantic partners rallied against Russia and in support of Ukraine after the invasion, said Pepijn Bergsen, a researcher at the Europa Program. at the Chatham House think tank in London.

The contrast between the two helped drive an emerging narrative of “democracies versus autocracies” in Europe, he said, adding that domestic politics also play a role.

“In Eastern and Central Europe, where Russia is considered by far the number one security threat, relations [com a China] were already starting to wear off, but the fact that China was so clearly aligned with Russia accelerated a shift,” Bergsen said.

China, for its part, appears to have underestimated the extent to which its position would reverberate through its relationship with Europe, which was already on shaky ground following European concerns about alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong. and by Chinese economic rebuke over Lithuania’s relations with Taiwan.

That miscalculation was shown at a terse summit between China and EU leaders in April, in which China focused on talking points about deepening its relations and economic cooperation, while EU officials were keen to pressure China to work with it to broker peace in Ukraine. China has claimed neutrality and supports peace, but has not taken concrete steps in that direction.

Growing concerns from the G7 – made up of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States – about China were reflected in the joint communiqué of the bloc, released on Tuesday after a summit in German Bavaria.

The document, which mentioned China about a dozen times – against four references in the G7 leaders’ statement a year earlier – touched on areas of cooperation but focused on asking China to improve its human rights record and comply with international rules.

And in a mark of how Russia has shaped the bloc’s view of China, the group urged Beijing to “pressure” Moscow to comply with United Nations resolutions and stop its military aggression. The statement followed what Washington called a “formal launch” on Sunday of a $600 billion investment initiative in G7 infrastructure, first announced last year.

The initiative, which the EU said “will demonstrate the power of development finance when it reflects democratic values”, was an apparent attempt to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which critics say Beijing has used to build its global influence.

‘Challenges placed’

But that is not to say that views in Europe and on both sides of the Atlantic are in line with China’s. This can be most clearly displayed in NATO, where exactly how the 30-nation bloc should treat China has been a key area of ​​debate.

The new NATO strategy document is expected to make clear that allies consider Russia the “most significant and direct threat to NATO’s security”, while also addressing China and “the challenges that Beijing poses to our security”. , interests and values” said Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg for the first time before the summit.

In recent years, when NATO statements began to make reference to China, some members and observers raised concerns that too firm a stance could turn China into an enemy.

Others see China as outside the region’s main security interests.

After a NATO meeting last June, in which leaders characterized China as a security challenge, French President Emmanuel Macron played down the move with a sarcastic assertion that “China is not in the North Atlantic”.

Some of these concerns still exist, even amid the emerging narrative of “authoritarians versus democracies” promoted by the US, according to Pierre Haroche, a European security researcher at the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM, Paris).

“Do you want to solidify the ‘bear-dragon monster’ to show that there is a clear ideological ‘Cold War’ between democracies and autocracies, because that is narratively convenient? or is it [uma melhor] strategy to say that the two[ChinaandRussia}areverydifferentactors…thattheymayeveninthefutureopposeeachother?”saidHarochesummarizingthedebate[ChinaeRússia}sãoatoresmuitodiferentes…quepodematénofuturoseopor?”disseHarocheresumindoodebate

But even if there are differences of view among member states, it is clear that NATO is thinking bigger at this year’s summit, with the historic inclusion of leaders from New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Japan.

The move was met with anger in China, where officials have long argued that NATO was looking to expand its presence in the Indo-Pacific, which Beijing sees as its own neighborhood.

“Cold War sewage cannot flow into the Pacific Ocean – that must be the general consensus in the Asia-Pacific region,” said a Tuesday editorial in the Communist Party-affiliated nationalist tabloid Global Times.

But observers characterized this not so much as an expansion of NATO into the Indo-Pacific, but as an attempt to strengthen relations between, in the words of the NATO secretariat, “like-minded countries”.

These democracies across the Pacific, like their counterparts in Europe, may now be seeing the threats they face as more connected, according to Small of The German Marshall Fund.

“There’s a lot more of a sense emerging from all of this, conditioned by China’s challenge, Russia’s challenge, that democratic allies need to be coordinated more effectively,” he said.