EU Commission president deconstructs Macron on China
Tom Rogan
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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen holds one of the top two European Union executive offices. She has the responsibility to forge policy consensus among the EU’s 27 member states. Where necessary, von der Leyen can prevent EU leaders from shredding the political union’s long-term interests.
On that latter point, I reference French President Emmanuel Macron and his attempt to shape a new European appeasement strategy toward China.
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After all, Macron spent his state visit to China last week singularly undermining the U.S.-European alliance. This is not hyperbole. Macron quite overtly said that Taiwan wasn’t Europe’s business, even though the question of Taiwan’s democratic survival cuts to the heart of French and European values. Indeed, Macron said that the EU would be foolish to align with the United States in constraining China’s imperial foreign policy. He basically said that defending the post-1945 democratic order, and all its accrued advances for freedom and prosperity, no longer matters. Just as long as, that is, France gets to have its Chinese trade cake.
Fortunately, von der Leyen views China through a different prism to Macron’s de facto “trade-at-all-costs” policy. Addressing the European Parliament on the need for a coherent EU China strategy, von der Leyen was forthright on Tuesday.
She observed how China’s “shows of military force in the South China Sea, in the East China Sea, and at the border with India directly affect our partners and their legitimate interests.” On Taiwan, she said that the EU stands “strongly against any unilateral change of the status quo, in particular by the use of force.” In a not-so-subtle nod to Macron’s silence on the issue, von der Leyen added, “We must also never shy away from talking about the deeply concerning and grave human rights violations in Xinjiang.” The commission president also condemned Chinese sanctions on EU parliamentarians who have had the temerity to call China’s policy toward the Uyghurs of Xinjiang what it is, a modern-day genocide.
This, then, was the anti-Macron vision of where the EU’s strategy for China needs to go. But Von der Leyen wasn’t done.
Addressing the elephant in the room, von der Leyen advanced her recent call for a new “de-risking” focus for the EU’s trade with China. She pledged that the EU would consider a China investment restriction on certain sensitive goods (likely a reference to semiconductor facilities). In contrast to Macron’s written Beijing pledge to work with China on tech issues, von der Leyen added, “We need to ensure that our companies’ capital, their expertise, their knowledge are not used to enhance the military and intelligence capabilities of those who are also our systemic rivals. That cannot be.”
I’ve previously criticized von der Leyen for her record as a former German defense minister, which saw the German armed forces starved of resources far short of NATO’s 2%-of-gross domestic product defense spending target. Of course, the ultimate responsibility for that defense neglect rested with the uber-overrated former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But it’s fortunate that von der Leyen, not Merkel (who made Macron look like a hawk on China), now occupies this EU office. True, von der Leyen’s words will inevitably earn Beijing’s rage. But what’s also true is that, as with German Foreign Minister Annalena Bearbock, von der Leyen gives the EU and America a cause for hope.
The hope that there remain some in Europe who want to defend freedom and security rather than sacrifice those values in order to salivate at Xi’s poisoned trough.