As aspiring Middle East peacemakers descend on Washington this week, one absentee has already been noted. Baroness Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, chose to pass up dinner at the White House and instead pressed ahead with her trip to China, where she inaugurated a new strategic dialogue with her Chinese counterpart. Despite some consternation in Paris, Ashton’s decision reflects a well-founded conviction that China policy is one of the few areas where the new post-Lisbon foreign policy machinery could make a real difference.
The existing obstacles to framing an effective European China strategy have not gone away. The EU struggles to form common policies toward most major powers. Differences among member states persist over how accommodating to be to Chinese sensitivities over Tibet, Taiwan, and human rights. The nature, scale, and relative benefits of trade with China vary considerably across Europe. And Beijing tends to be smarter at maneuvering around the politics of the EU than the other way around.
Still, the conditions for shaping a European China policy worthy of the name are more propitious than they have been for years.
The most important development is that the endemic competition among the “Big 3” to be Beijing’s best friend in Europe has receded. Over the last two years, Germany, France, and the U.K. moved in rapid succession from being China’s favorite to being out on their ear, as meetings with the Dalai Lama, threats of Olympic boycotts, and protests over Beijing’s decision to execute a mentally ill Briton took their toll on the respective relationships. 2010 has been a great deal calmer, but memories of diplomatic freezes, cancelled summits, and state-sponsored protests outside Carrefour supermarkets are still fresh.
The time spent in the doghouse reflecting has been productive. As China’s power has grown in the last few years, it has become clearer to even the largest member states that their individual influence over Beijing is limited and is only going to diminish. While still hesitant, national capitals are now more willing than they were to kick things up a level and see whether a genuinely EU-led approach might be a better option. The newfound assertiveness in Chinese diplomacy – most notably at the Copenhagen climate talks, which left many European political leaders stunned – precipitated a series of separate national policy reviews that came to similar conclusions about the need to strengthen the EU’s hand in China policy. Even the Eurosceptic British Conservative party included a line about it in their manifesto.
In Brussels itself, after a bruising few years, a realistic spirit has descended on officials. The vaulting ambitions for EU-China partnership have been scaled back, and any belief that Chinese foreign and domestic policy could gently be coaxed toward European norms by wise counsel and judicious use of incentives has disappeared. Instead, the talk of “leverage,” “bargaining,” and much else that would characterize a more competitive relationship has become ubiquitous.
But none of these factors would be sufficient were there not also the prospect of using this occasion to draw together the various instruments of the EU machinery. Enter Lady Ashton. EU China policy has for a long time lacked even a notional address. The European Trade Commissioner’s office – the closest department to running point for the EU on China – was clearly an inadequate home for the spectrum of issues that relations with China now encompass. Ashton’s double-hatted position changes that, spanning as it does the role of both Vice-President of the European Commission and High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy. There is now a natural home for the formulation and coordination of a China strategy that can draw both on the EU’s economic and foreign policy capacities.
Even the new dialogue format should help. In recent years, the focal points of the relationship were the dysfunctional EU-China summits, which were characterized by an overly expansive Commission-led agenda, and high-level meetings with member states, which were consumed by bilateral trade. Although they came up, subjects such as Iran and climate change tended to be lost in the morass. By contrast, Ashton’s talks with her opposite number, State Councillor Dai Bingguo, at least provide the prospect of addressing some of the overarching issues in the relationship in a more systematic and less cluttered fashion.
But will member states invest Ashton with the requisite authority to pull the task off ? The post-Copenhagen angst about China has already faded somewhat and the French complaint this week suggests precisely the sort of difficulty she is likely to face. But a process has been set in motion. Ashton has been tasked with presenting an outline for the EU’s future relations with emerging powers—above all, China—at the EU summit in mid-September. And improving EU China policy will not require a revolution in thinking. A greater level of focus and prioritization ; a more open-eyed view of the relationship’s nature and prospects ; and a sharper sense of Europe’s objectives and capacities – all this would already constitute a notable success, and is hardly out of reach. For all Bernard Kouchner’s objections, even Paris must admit that Beijing is worth a missed dinner.
