Why China just lashed out at the EU president over her Philippines trip
Tom Rogan
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Underlining its desperation to avoid greater cooperation between the United States and the European Union in the Indo-Pacific region, China lashed out at EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday.
The rebuke came via the Global Times, a newspaper used by the Communist Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission to broadcast its views to the West. The Global Times declared that “Europe needs politicians who genuinely serve its interests and represent the true will of European countries. Von der Leyen is not one of them.” It added that von der Leyen “sounds like Uncle Sam’s parrot.”
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What sparked Beijing’s latest ire?
Von der Leyen is currently visiting the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally. Under current president Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Manila is rebuilding ties with Washington after the tensions of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s tenure. Beijing’s dancing duck, Duterte allowed China to seize the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone and encouraged China’s imperial ambitions in the South China Sea. Absurdly, as in the map below, China claims absolute ownership over the waters, fisheries, energy reserves, and transit rights within that nine-dash line.
Much to Beijing’s disappointment, however, China’s imperialism is not something that Marcos is nearly as willing as Duterte to accept. And von der Leyen lent her support to Marcos. Von der Leyen endorsed a South China Sea-related 2016 international tribunal finding that ruled for the Philippines over China. Von der Leyen added that “Security in Europe and security in the Indo-Pacific is indivisible. Challenges to the rules-based order in our interconnected world affect all of us.”
In response, the Global Times insisted that “Security in Europe and security in the Indo-Pacific are two different things.” It claimed von der Leyen was “trying to legitimize the EU’s interference in Indo-Pacific security affairs. She is daydreaming, and such legitimacy does not exist.” The propaganda outlet concluded that “von der Leyen is deviating from the EU’s original track.”
This is fiction from Beijing. Growing Sino-Russian naval cooperation proves that there are connections between security concerns in Europe and the Pacific. And to deter Chinese imperialism in the South China Sea and its threatened aggression against Taiwan, Beijing needs to understand that the international community (and not just the U.S. and Japan) is opposed to its destabilizing actions. Hence why China adores Emmanuel Macron’s “strategic autonomy” theory and greatly fears increased U.S. and EU unity. Beijing is now openly threatening EU members like Italy to avoid a cooling in their China ties, for example.
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Unlike her feeble-minded EU Council president partner, Charles Michel, von der Leyen seems increasingly determined to resist Beijing’s efforts to intimidate the EU into continued appeasement. As Commission president, von der Leyen leads the EU’s engagement with member state leaders and thus has significant influence over the political union’s foreign policy. Her stance draws a key contrast with the approach of the EU’s two most powerful leaders, Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz.
Still, befitting its foreign policy chief Wang Yi, China’s arrogant inability to show respect for foreign leaders means that its angry rebuke of von der Leyen will do far more harm than good. After all, why would von der Leyen now seek a pro-China position when it has just referred to her as “Uncle Sam’s parrot”?