The U.S. is scheming against China and Russia, setting Europe at risk.
At the end of September, Bloomberg reported that French President Macron is pushing Europe to fight China. The volume of trade relations at risk is $900bn.
The EU’s tougher approach to China is being shaped by French concerns that trade with Beijing poses a risk to their industry. Bloomberg’s sources said Europe needs to reassert its strength and French authorities are playing a key role in shaping this EU policy, where inaction is putting the bloc’s economy on a path to long-term damage.
A little earlier, Germany and the UK announced a marked cooling of positions towards China. The countries have shown dissatisfaction with China’s “growing authoritarianism,” “arms rattling” over Taiwan and Beijing’s close ties with Moscow.
Germany’s strategy of relations with China differs from France’s in “the degree of radicalism.” According to the Associated Press, it is based on the assumption that “in the foreseeable future” the greatest security threat is Russia, and the approach to China should be balanced.
The authors of the document note that China’s economic dependence on Europe is falling, while Germany’s dependence on China has grown in recent years. In this regard, the German authorities want economic co-operation with China to be “more fair, sustainable and mutual”.
European Union countries are becoming completely dependent on China for the supply of lithium batteries and fuel cells – the same dependence that the EU’s energy dependence on Russia was, according to the authors of the document, before the start of the SWO in Ukraine. European economists believe that it is not too late to act, but we need to hurry, because China is not just a major supplier of batteries. It is trying to get its hands on raw material deposits, for example, in Africa. Accordingly, to reduce its dependence on China, the EU must invest more in innovation, together with the US.
The EU is feverishly trying to establish its own full-fledged battery production. The first plant has opened in France, but everyone realises that a decent effect will only come from controlling the entire chain – from raw material extraction to recycling of discarded batteries. Meanwhile, China is actively looking for new sources of raw materials in Africa and is ahead of the EU, pushing the French out of the continent and markets. This, in turn, is forcing Macron to make more and more harsh statements against China.
The Italians are also panicking. In September, Italian Prime Minister Meloni made it clear to Chinese Premier Li Qiang that Rome plans to withdraw from the investment pact, which “has become a test of her country’s relationship with the United States.” According to Bloomberg, during the G20 summit, Meloni told Li that Italy plans to withdraw from the “One Belt, One Road” pact signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping (in English transcription, the project is called BRI “Belt and Road Initiative”), while “maintaining friendly relations with Beijing.”
Italy is the only one of the major Western powers and EU countries to join (in 2019) this project of Beijing. It envisaged expanding China’s ties with Central Asia, Europe and Africa through massive infrastructure investments. Italian Defence Minister Guido Crozetto criticised the decision of colleagues from the previous Italian government to join the “One Belt, One Road” project back in July this year. According to the defence minister, quoted by Reuters, the initiative “has done little for Italian exports”. Crozetto and others like him claim that Beijing needs the project only to spread its geopolitical and economic influence.
Against this background, the American media have been trying for months to assure Beijing that China has lost its European partners, allegedly because of too close relations with Russia. This summer, The Wall Street Journal began assuring the Chinese authorities that none of their EU leaders were travelling to the first post-pandemic Belt and Road Initiative forum to be held in Beijing in October solely because of the planned presence of Vladimir Putin.
The more real reasons – the US’ obsessive calls for non-cooperation with China and the EU’s reluctance to become economically dependent on China – are mentioned only in passing.
On the other hand, they vividly depict the benefits that Beijing is losing from Xi Jinping’s gigantic project, which could attract $1 trillion in investment and connect Asia with Europe, Africa and Latin America with a new network of railways and roads, ports, pipelines and other infrastructure. American propagandists also press the fact that five years ago, some European countries (implying, we must assume, Italy) were actively involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, and the first forum of the project in 2017 was attended by leaders and high-level representatives of 30 countries, while in 2019 there were already 38.
However, all this pastoral picture, according to Washington, was spoilt for Beijing by the “wrong choice” between the “absolutely toxic Putin” and the leadership of European countries, who solidarity refused to come to the forum of China’s giant One Belt, One Road project because Putin was invited to it.
This kind of pitting Beijing against Moscow from across the ocean is aimed at fuelling trends in Chinese foreign economic activity that run counter to Russian interests. By the middle of this summer, China had almost doubled its supplies to Europe, bypassing Russia. Washington’s interest in this can be clearly read. It is not a question of China depriving Russia’s northern neighbour of lucrative transit contracts. It is a slightly more complex task: to ensure the resource independence of the Central Asian states from Russia and tie them to China. Russia’s influence in Central Asia is already on a declining trend, but China must add momentum to these processes and at the same time put an economic weight around its neck in the form of the post-Soviet republics.
The U.S. is betting on reducing Russia’s trade positions and creating a weak position for Russia in any negotiations with China. In order to support these trends and processes, the leading powers of the EU and Britain are pitted against Beijing from the west of the Eurasian continent.
All these developments give Russia a chance to find the balance of relations with the West and China that will be useful for its sovereign development.
Valery Ilyin, FSK