After Merkel, who? China
and EU ties on a knife-edge as German chancellor says long goodbye
·
•For 16 years, Angela Merkel spearheaded an EU-China relationship leaning
more towards commerce than human rights
·
•Amid pressure to tackle rights abuses and economic foul play, the
27-nation bloc faces being caught between sparring superpowers minus its most
seasoned referee
Finbarr
Bermingham
9
Aug 2021
SOUTH
CHINA MORNING POST
https://archive.vn/n7coS
As Angela
Merkel’s leadership of Germany heads into its final weeks, jostling is underway inside and
outside the European Union to shape its future relations with China.
Her farewell
tour featured a trip to Washington, a series of high-level summits with
Western allies, and multiple meetings with top-level American officials in
Europe – each of which had China placed high on the agenda.
Also on the
schedule was a series of calls with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during which he
was careful to remind her of Europe’s “strategic autonomy
” and
independence from the US-China policy, while she continued to seek out areas
for collaboration.
It was
typical of Merkel, who has for 16 years been the primary sponsor of an EU-China
relationship that was weighted more heavily towards commerce than human rights.
But she leaves
things delicately poised. A fierce backlash against China is rippling through
the continent, as politicians, rights groups, and media pressure authorities
to take a firmer stand against human rights abuses and
economic foul play.
Europe finds
itself caught in the middle of two sparring superpowers and will soon be
without its most experienced referee. As it bids Auf Wiedersehen Angela,
players on all sides are wondering who will fill the void she leaves behind.
China will be
hoping for a leader that maintains the status quo. This would likely come
through two scenarios, but both come with complications.
The first is
that Merkel’s party’s candidate Armin Laschet tops September’s poll comfortably
and pursues a similar strategy with China, despite resistance against such a
policy from even within the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
In May, it
was frequently said that the CDU needed a cool summer, free from
climate change-related events, to hold the Green Party at bay.
But its lead in the polls has slipped to 26 percent, with the Greens
gaining to 21 percent, after catastrophic
floods in western Germany
left 164 dead and more than 100 missing.
Laschet’s own
popularity has fallen to 17 percent, according to a study by Forsa, after he
was caught chuckling on camera during a televised presidential address on the
floods. The Green party’s Annalena Baerbock and Social Democrat Olaf Scholz
polled 19 percent and 18 percent respectively, while 45 percent of
respondents said they didn’t like any of the candidates.
It looks
likely that the Greens – which advocate a tougher stance on China – will play a
major role in the next coalition with Laschet leading. But even then, it will
take some time before he carries the authority of Merkel at the EU.
“I think he
will need some time. He’s really a more skilled politician than people think.
You don’t get where he is by not being skilled and there is some resemblance to
Merkel in the sense that he tends to be the calm one who ends up winning in the
end. But he doesn’t know and has not socialized with all of these heads of
government,” said Jonathan Hackenbroich, a policy fellow for economic
statecraft at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Beijing’s
other preference would be French President Emmanuel Macron assuming Merkel’s
mantel on the European stage, then winning his own re-election next year.
Macron has been a strong devotee of the concept of strategic autonomy – a fact
noted with suspicion in Washington.
One senior
Hong Kong officials described Macron as a “top statesman” and said they were
less concerned about the German election than the French.
After all,
they said the Germans can be trusted to preserve the strong commercial bond
with China regardless of who succeeds Merkel, whereas the situation would be
less clear-cut in France, should Marine Le Pen or Xavier Bertrand replace
Macron next Spring.
The argument
was made shortly after Macron lashed out at Nato’s decision to designate China
as a “systemic challenger” for the first time in June – but only after he gave
the green light to the communique that contained it.
“Nato is an
organization that concerns the North Atlantic, China has little to do with the
North Atlantic,” said Macron, in remarks greeted warmly in Beijing, but
frostily in Washington.
Jiang Shixue,
a professor following EU-China relations at Shanghai University, said there are
“two conditions to being a major sponsor of close EU-China ties”.
“[They must
be] a big player in European affairs, and have a correct attitude towards
China. Merkel and Macron do meet the two conditions. Germany and France will
always be the major countries in the EU. So let’s hope that the future leaders
of these two countries will maintain a correct attitude towards China or be
friendly to China,” said Jiang.
For two years
now, Macron has been by Merkel’s side through a series of dealings with China.
The pair held
two trilateral calls with Xi this year, while Macron was infamously, and to the
chagrin of other member states, present as the EU and China agreed in principle
on an investment deal, during the last days of Germany’s EU presidency in
December 2020.
“It’s quite
clear that Merkel is doing a kind of extended handoff to Macron. It is a little
as if Merkel thinks there needs to be another head of government in Europe, who
can effectively occupy the kind of special role that she had,” said Andrew
Small, a senior transatlantic fellow with the US-headquartered German Marshall
Fund’s Asia Programme.
“As the
Chinese know, the president of France or the chancellor of Germany is a figure
with more clout on all of these questions than the president of the European
Commission, and so you are kind of getting this shift in the way that the way
the China portfolio is being handled,” he added.
A war of words between the French
and Russian ambassadors in Beijing this month, however, was a reminder that French authorities can be
more forceful on human rights than their German counterparts.
Laurent Bili,
the French envoy, accused China of exporting its model of authoritarianism,
saying that for the past year, “we have [seen] direct attacks to our freedom of
expression in our country, with some attacks to society, to some journalists
and that raised a lot of questions. That is a real question.”
For some
observers outside the axis, however, there is no real alternative.
“France,
Germany and the commission. That’s where I’d like to see it coming from – the
rest of us will follow. And I must say that I think the French and the Germans
have been quite good and fairly balanced with the relationship with China as
well. So I would give them kudos on that,” Alexander Stubb, the former Finnish
prime minister, told the Post.
But it also
has its detractors.
When the
triumvirate announced the completion of the investment deal in December, many
parts of Europe were shocked. Officials from Belgium, Lithuania, and Poland
pushed back, while the Netherlands was also said to be upset by how it was
sprung on them without consultation.
The subsequent mothballing
of the deal by the
European Parliament marked a second major defeat for Merkel on China policy,
after her coalition government scrapped her plans to allow China’s
Huawei Technologies Co to
build Germany’s 5G mobile network.
Members were
even more aggrieved in June when Macron and Merkel tried to force a reset in
relations with Russia.
“Merkel and
Macron is either clueless or has learned nothing from 80 years of history and
the nations betrayed by the Germans. Without even talking to other EU
countries. Exactly like their forebears. I say that knowing full well what I
say,” tweeted former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves at the time.
A senior
European diplomat said of the bungled affair that “I have some sympathy with
the point they were making but the approach was cack-handed and they deserved
the rebuke they got”.
There is a
view among many politicos that with Merkel gone, neither Macron nor Laschet
would get away with such chicanery, particularly with the tide of public
opinion turning so much against China.
“Laschet would
want to maintain the same China policy as Merkel, but it’s going to be more
difficult for him. I think there’s quite a lot of pressure and Merkel, because
of her authority, and her cooperation with Macron has been able to withstand
it. But I think after Merkel it’s going to be much more difficult to withstand
that kind of pressure,” said Frans-Paul van der Putten, coordinator of the
Clingendael China Centre at The Hague.
Fewer EU
countries are as economically dependent on France as they are on Germany, while
Merkel is renowned for levels of horse-trading and cat-herding among member
states that both men have yet to achieve.
“Firstly, Macron has to fight hard to secure his political position. And
secondly, Macron does not have the stature of Merkel to lead – the EU is 27
[nations]. It is not the Franco-German
axis that rules Europe. Even
now, an undisputed leadership of Merkel is totally not the case. It’s time for
a change to more realistic ties with China,” said Bastiaan Belder, a former
Dutch MEP was the parliament’s rapporteur on EU-China relations.
It is
difficult, however, to see beyond the Franco-German axis, although Belder – and
many others linked to the parliament – would like to see a democratization of
foreign policy leadership.
Other EU heavyweights include Italy’s Mario
Draghi, but he is only suspected
to be in the role for a short period, while Rome, the only Western European
member of the Belt and Road Initiative has flip-flopped on China policy in
recent months.
The EU’s two
longest-serving leaders post-Merkel will be Mark Rutte of the Netherlands and
Hungary’s Viktor Orban. The leadership prospects for Orban, the bête noire
within the EU’s borders, can be discounted immediately.
Dutch foreign
policy is undergoing a recalibration, with the Netherlands traditionally
standing closer to Britain and America than France and Germany. Its
Indo-Pacific policy was formative in shaping the EU version launched this year,
and political analysts say Rutte may try to assert more influence on China's
policy going forward.
“The
reorientation of Dutch foreign policy stimulates the Dutch government to play a
more active role at the EU” said van der Putten. “But the other side of the
story is that I don’t think there is an alternative for Germany or Germany in
combination with France.”
