Responding to Chinese amb Zhang Ming, @WiegandEU, EU's top foreign policy maker on Asia, began by citing... Deng Xiaoping's call for 實事求是 (seek the truth from the fact). "China is indeed EU's 2nd biggest trading partner. At the same time we have to be able to ask questions...
Two questions he raised:
- How many companies can operate in China outside a joint venture
- How many European researchers can access China's top research programmes
EU has adopted a "more realist" approach since March 2019. "The wind has been shifting also nationally."
"Europeans are sceptical realists. The outbreak of covid 19 and the management of the crisis increased US-China rivalry and, yes, also the imposition of the national security law on Hong Kong has affected our relationship." @WiegandEU
"China's priority remains managing its relationship w/ US. But China's renewed interest towards Europe may find some origins in precisely these tensions. For the EU ...
... while we maintain close relations with China & the US, we are unequivocally not equidistant. Transatlantic relationships runs close and deep whatever the policy differences may be." @WiegandEU
"2020 was always going to be a pivotal year for EU-China relations. It is the year where we would work to get China to live up to the commitments it made during the 2019 summit" attended by Li Keqiang in Brussels, @WiegandEU said. "The year where we would really find ...
"... our engagement with China through the negotiation of a new strategic agenda of cooperation; the year where we would strengthen our resilience, our leverage by implementing the joint communication with its implication for internal market decisions."
"It is clear we will not tackle successfully climate change without China – the emitter of 28.5% of the world's greenhouse gases. And the European Union accounts for 8%." @WiegandEU
"Under the EU's one China policy, we recognise the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, but we also pursue friendly relations and close cooperation with Taiwan in a wide range of areas," @WiegandEU said. "The EU-Taiwan relations remain excellent."
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#BREAKING Xi just named a new commander of the PLA Rocket Force, amid rumours of investigations into the very top of the key military unit in charge of ICBM deployment and Taiwan war planning.
The death of the deputy commander was recently announced 3 weeks after it happened.
And the top job falls to a sort-of outsider:
Wang Houbin, formerly deputy commander of the PLA Navy and chief of staff of the South China Sea fleet, has been picked to lead the rocket force.
In a highly unusual move, Xi also concurrently replaced the political commissar at the Rocket Force, which handles China’s expanding nuclear arsenal.
Xu Xisheng is moved from the Southern Theatre Command to be the CCP’s point man for political control over the scandal-hit unit.
"There has been a change of dynamic in the relationship between China and Russia. It is clear from the visit that China sees Putin’s weakness as a way to increase its leverage over Russia."
"It is clear that the power balance in that relationship – which for most of the last century favoured Russia – has now reversed."
"Most telling were President Xi’s parting words to Putin on the steps outside the Kremlin when he said: 'Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years. And we are the ones driving these changes together.'"
“Where trade is not fair, we must respond more robustly. China has made boosting clean-tech innovation and manufacturing a key priority in its five-year plan. It dominates global production in sectors like electric vehicles or solar panels, which are …
essential for the transition. But competition on net zero must be based on a level-playing field. China has been openly encouraging energy-intensive companies in Europe and elsewhere to relocate all or part of their production. They do so with the promise of cheap energy…
low labour costs and a more lenient regulatory environment. At the same time, China heavily subsidies its industry and restricts access to its market for EU companies. We will still need to work and trade with China – especially when it comes to this transition.
Finally got time to read Macron’s keynote speech to ambassadors last week. Key points 🇪🇺🇨🇳
- Rejects European “equidistance” between US and China. Recalls US as a democratic ally, while stressing the need to talk to China on climate
- Steers Europe away from US-China conflicts
Macron: “We are not ready to have a strategy of confrontation with China in the Indo-Pacific, where we have a strategy of preserving the freedom of sovereignty, the protection of our space – dare I say it also the protection of our maritime space and our nationals, our partners.”
Macron implies he won’t apply NATO to Asia:
“We have a military, diplomatic and climate strategy. But we are not in a confrontational logic and we do not consider that alliances which have been structured for certain oppositions should extend over the Indo-Pacific.”
#BREAKING: UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet's office calls China's treatment of the Uyghur minority as constituting "serious human rights violations" in a report issued just minutes before the end of her tenure.
The UN office says it is "reasonable to conclude that a pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention occurred" in Xinjiang, "at least during 2017 to 2019, affecting a significant proportion of the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minority community."
The UN office says it lacks data to show how many people were imprisoned, but: "Cumulatively...these different sources of information support a conclusion that the system of VETC facilities was intended and operated on a wide scale spanning the geographic entirety of the region."