The EU will try to persuade China to refrain from helping Russia circumvent Western sanctions today at a two-way digital summit in which Beijing seeks to restart its war-torn relationship with Europe. Ukraine.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel, speaking on behalf of the 27, will hold a video conference with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and then with President Xi Jinping.
The talks “will focus on the role we call on China to play, to exert all the influence and pressure required of Russia. That was not the original purpose of the summit, but” it became necessary, “French Deputy Foreign Minister Clement said yesterday. Bonn.
“It is necessary to know whether China will exert its influence to declare a ceasefire” and organize “humanitarian corridors” or whether it will help “Moscow to bypass” sanctions by increasing Russian hydrocarbon markets or offering financial assistance. said on his part a senior European official.
“Strategic calculation”
Beijing refuses to condemn Russian invasion of Ukraine. In early March, the Chinese government praised China’s “rock-solid” friendship with Russia, and recalled Moscow’s “reasonable” concerns about its security.
Europeans are seeking to influence the “strategic calculation of Chinese leaders” by warning them of “the financial costs they will incur if they offer support to Russia,” said Gregor Stetz, an analyst at the German MERICS institute.
China’s response allows it to “remain on Russia’s side without paying the price. If it does not put more pressure on it, it will offer more help to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” said German MEP Reinhard Butikofer. .
However, the EU is captivated by its interdependence with Beijing: it absorbs 15% of the Asian giant’s exports, which supply it with many processed goods and key ingredients. China also accounts for 10% of the 27 exports, a key market, especially for German industries.
The EU and China signed an ambitious investment agreement at the end of 2020, at the urging of Berlin. But its ratification remains frozen amid European sanctions over alleged human rights abuses, such as forced labor in Xinjiang province, and Beijing’s countermeasures to MEPs and European researchers. Another cause of friction: the boycott of China’s imports from Lithuania following the opening of a Taiwanese diplomatic mission in that country.
Friendship “without limits”
For Valerie Nike of the French Institute for Strategic Research, the “risk” is for China to sell its “neutrality” at a very high price to secure “concessions such as the resumption of negotiations on the investment agreement”.
The day before yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, visiting China, received a reaffirmation of the two countries’ “borderless” friendship with the United States, in the name of building a “new world multipolar order”, a vision that the emergence of what they call the “authoritarian” bloc.
“The idea that China will be detached from Russia is deceptive: when the war in Ukraine ends, US attention will be given priority, not a friendly one, to China, which therefore has an interest in continuing its co-operation.” with her neighbor, judges Sylvie Berman, former French ambassador to both Moscow and Beijing.
He reminded that China is anything but isolated, that several countries (India, Pakistan, South Africa, Brazil …) also avoid criticizing Moscow.
For Beijing, Europeans were left to fend for themselves in a Washington-sponsored conflict that exposed Western vulnerabilities.
“Positive Energy”;
Given its dependence on Russian gas, “Europe probably shot itself in the foot” when it decided to pursue “US sanctions”, the English-language Global Times, which often expresses Chinese nationalism, commented sarcastically. He ruled out any link between EU-China relations and the crisis between Europeans and Russia over the war in Ukraine – issues which, for the top European official, are “inextricably linked”.
Asked about the meeting yesterday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Beijing wanted to continue “developing (bilateral) relations”, wanted more “stability and positive energy in a complex and turbulent global environment”, without any nominal reference to Ukraine.
For Wang Yuei, a Europe expert at Beijing’s Renmin University, China, like the EU, hopes the war in Ukraine will end as soon as possible. “I imagine China will want to use this summit to discuss with the EU how to create the conditions that would be acceptable to Putin, to end what the Kremlin calls a ‘special military operation,'” he said.
China is concerned that European countries have taken a hard line on US-influenced foreign policy and has demanded that Brussels “exclude any foreign interference” in bilateral relations.
SOURCE: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ
Source: Capital
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