After Russia, Europe must also wake up to China

Europe's real problem with China is not electric vehicles. This is the basic vehemence of the Chinese Communist Party.

The European Union decision Imposing tariffs on Chinese-made electronic vehicles was inevitable and correct, but it doesn't solve anything.

This was inevitable because, regardless of the results of the months-long investigation into Chinese subsidies, the United States had already imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Without rapid action, Europe would have been flooded with even more electric vehicles from China, hurting the competitiveness efforts of domestic automakers.

The decision was the right one, prioritizing tariffs based on levels of cooperation, transparency and public subsidies. BYD, which saw the slightest price increase, will still be able to sell its Chinese-produced vehicles at prices much lower than equivalent European models and will be incentivized to expand its European production operations in Hungary and beyond. The European Commission has thus made it clear that it seeks to protect European manufacturers without triggering an all-out trade war.

The United Kingdom, which is due to change government in three weeks and therefore cannot make major decisions, faces a dilemma. Does it want to become the only remaining destination in the northern hemisphere for Chinese imports of cheap electric vehicles or will it follow suit?

Yet overall, last week's decision solves nothing, because the real challenge facing the EU is to develop a grand comprehensive strategy towards China, in which measures such as -these can be framed in a coherent manner. But this is absent.

Invade Taiwan

For Europe as a whole, it is time to start defining trade policies towards China in the context of the geopolitical realities created by its president, Xi Jinping, and not the economic story told in the years of his predecessor, Hu Jintao, when all connections between East and West were supposed to be win-win. China is building an army and navy designed to invade Taiwan, as the first step in a strategy to drive the United States out of the Western Pacific and as proof of the concept that, for the rest of the century, might is right. 'Indo-Pacific. region.

No one needs a degree in cryptography to understand this. US intelligence agencies believe Xi set 2027 as the deadline to be ready to invade Taiwan, and a U.S. admiral told Congress in 2021 that 2027 was indeed the likely planned date for aggression.

Last month China jumped air and naval assets in Taiwan's protection zones, saying the military exercise would severely punish the island's separatist acts. Meanwhile, pro-China opposition parties in Taiwan have pushed through legislation seen as weakening its self-defense capability.

In turn, the American foreign policy community has become obsessed with the Chinese threat, even as the war in Ukraine consumes time, money and energy in Washington. In a European worst-case scenario, Donald Trump returns to the presidency and reallocates military resources from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to deter China in the Pacific. But even if Joe Biden wins again in November, America's strategic focus will turn primarily toward China, bluntly posing the question to European policymakers: do they want Europe to be a global power or a chessboard on which to play others?

The range of implicit answers to this question paints a picture of division and inconsistency in Europe's position towards China. Hungary and Serbia want to be its European proxies. Romania and Bulgaria want to be its strategic partners. Germany wants to be its critical friend. France wants European strategic autonomy and will pit the United States against China to achieve it.

Italy and Greece each have played willingly with the Belt and Road Initiative, ceding key port infrastructure and stakes in iconic companies to China. Under Mario Draghis, however, Italy slowed its participation, before Giorgia Meloni stopped it altogether last year.

In Britain, the new Labor government will take the same basic view like his conservative predecessor: he classifies China as a strategic competitor at the hard power level but as a potential collaborator on climate change and economic development. He promises a policy that both challenges, competes and cooperates with China where appropriate.

Power Projection

In short, the absence of a clear European grand strategy or an image of its place in the world has, in the short 12 years of Xi's administration, made the continent a place for projecting Chinese power . We'll only see how bad this idea was if the worst happens. The moment China attacks Taiwan, every corporate infiltrator, every academic bribe, every mandated politician will rush into the public space to declare that China is not our enemy.

And in their own words, they might be right. If there is no coherent vision of strategic autonomy and technological sovereignty, and if so many European politicians, universities and businesses are willing to submit to the Chinese Communist Party's monopoly on power in Beijing, why expect this fractured continent to make a decision in defense of a country that the EU does not even recognize?

For those of us who want a tougher line, it must start with a vision of Europe's future in a world rife with great power rivalries and the threat of war. Europe is a strong and industrialized continental economy, endowed with democratic values ​​which, particularly compared to those of the United States, have proven to be the most resilient in the post-war period. As the rules-based order fragments, it is in Europe's interest to continue to be part of the most open and multilateral version of the future that can be created.

Thus, strategic autonomy is a goal that must be pursued within the existing Western alliance system. Even if the EU as a whole cannot be persuaded to support America in its confrontation with China, it must show morally whose side it is on and put no obstacles in the way of European powers wishing to go further.

The most urgent and important problem is Russian aggression. But this is powered and armed by Chinese technology: if Russia managed to freeze the conflict in Ukraine, there is no doubt that its army would be re-equipped by Beijing.

Wars of aggression

Like it or not, the so-called CRINK alliance (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) was formed at the same time that the late cold warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski predicted that it would be in 1998, an anti-hegemonic coalition united not by an ideology but by complementary demands. As the Ukrainian conflict shows and as the Iranian attack on Israel confirms, the current direction of this anti-hegemonic coalition is one of wars of aggression.

So it is time for Europe – and including my own country, Britain – to wake up. Whether he imposes 15%, 38% or 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles doesn't matter: when aggression takes place, trade will cease. The difference between reducing risks and decoupling the European economy from that of China is therefore academic. Everything Europe does must be framed by the deteriorating security situation, the fundamental lack of confidence of CRINK leaders and their propensity to resort to external force as a solution to internal instability.

What Europe needs to do today and should have done a long time ago is build a resilient, state-backed, European-controlled electric vehicle sector. It must build industrial and soft power alliances across the Indo-Pacific region, even as it focuses its own defense spending on deterring Russia. From science to silicon chip production, we must relearn the direction of the state.

And it needs politicians and administrators who understand that while China is not our enemy, it does not behave exactly like our friend.

This is a joint publication of Social Europe And IPS Log