Wang Yi, right, and Sergei Lavrov during a signing ceremony in Beijing on March 23.
Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia / Getty Images
Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia / Getty Images
This week, Joe Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to work more with allies to pressure China, coordinating with U.S. partners to impose sanctions for alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Beijing’s answer: hit the allies as hard as possible.
China wasted no time Monday night and immediately retaliated with reciprocity sanctions against European Union officials while summoning the bloc’s ambassador to China. These achievements included politicians from several countries, one of the main EU bodies that formulated foreign policy and the largest research institute in Europe focused on China.
“It was very unfortunate that they got so deep inside their toolbox,” said Joerg Wuttke, president of the Beijing-based European Chamber of Commerce of China and a board member of the Mercator Institute of China Studies, one of the sanctioned entities. Noting that a historic EU-China investment deal reached in December is likely to go against him, Wuttke said China seemed to treat allies harder than the US
“Size matters,” he said. “They are more cautious with the US and are still completely behind Canada, Australia and the European Union.”
China’s assertive response to a rare public outcry with U.S. officials in Alaska last week shows that President Xi Jinping’s government is exploring international criticism of what it considers “internal issues” from Xinjiang. and Hong Kong to Taiwan. Beijing’s stance runs the risk of drawing clearer lines between geopolitical blocs than those of Donald Trump, whose “America first” policy led to a damaging trade war, but also allowed Beijing to raid traditional allies. of the USA felt alienated.
“Just the beginning”
“This could be just the beginning,” said Bates Gill, a professor of Security Studies in Asia and the Pacific at Macquarie University in Australia.
“Both sides, China on the one hand and other advanced democracies, typically liberal on the other, will test the other to see how much pain they can tolerate,” he added. “There is a lot more decoupling that can happen and we should expect it, especially in areas of high-tech trade, investment and access to capital markets.”
The US, UK and EU sanction China for human rights abuses
China this week he contacted two longtime friends, Russia and North Korea, who have also received US sanctions in recent years. On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on how to counter the hegemony of the US dollar by promoting the yuan and the ruble.
“Grease China”
“Some Western countries have staged a show to dirty China, but they should know the days when they could interfere in China’s internal affairs by making false lies,” Wang said in China’s Guangxi province.
The setback continued on Tuesday afternoon at the daily briefing of the Foreign Ministry in Beijing, where spokeswoman Hua Chunying declared Xinjiang a “human rights success story” while unleashing an unusually broad attack on the EU, Canada and the United States, which imposed new sanctions. in China this week. On Monday, diplomats from more than 20 countries also gathered in front of a Beijing court where former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig was being tried on espionage charges.
China facing the Western Unity Show in Canadian Try it
Hua’s criticism spanned centuries, from his role in the slave trade, imperialism and Nazism to the assassination of George Floyd and the alleged accumulation of coronavirus vaccines. He rejected criticism of countries with “small populations” and mocked his coalition as “pseudo-multilateralism.”
“Today China is by no means the 120-year-old China,” Hua said in an apparent reference to the agreement that the imperial powers forced China to sign after the boxers’ rebellion. “The United States, the United Kingdom and other countries should not dream of surrendering to China. I’m afraid they don’t have the ability to strangle or strangle China. “
Beijing’s top diplomats set the tone for the latest rhetoric during Alaska’s meetings with the United States, when Politburo member Yang Jiechi made extensive statements about the U.S. human rights record and wondered if it represented international public opinion. Chinese propaganda later announced the sale of T-shirts and cell phone cases with phrases used in conversations, including “Stop interfering in China’s internal affairs” and “The United States does not have the necessary qualifications to speak.” us condescendingly. ”
On Tuesday, China’s tightly controlled social networks were replete with nationalist voices supporting the Chinese government’s retaliatory sanctions. Many echoed the official line that Western countries have no shortage of human rights abuses and argued in favor of government policies in Xinjiang, where the United Nations estimates that more than a million Uyghurs mostly ethnic remain in internment camps.
However, some expressed concern about the impact on China’s ties with Europe, in particular the fate of the Comprehensive Investment Agreement with the EU. “Is a new cold war coming?” read a Weibo post that received over 6,000 likes. “Being harassed is not in China’s favor.”
China is likely to continue to impose reciprocal sanctions and strongly criticize coordinated statements, even if it derails the EU investment agreement, said Natasha Kassam, a former Australian diplomat who worked on human rights issues in China and she is now director of the think tank Lowy Institute public opinion and foreign policy program.
“Xi Jinping’s China logic often prevents rethinking counterproductive policy,” he said. “And Chinese officials seem to prioritize a show of strength over global public opinion.”
– With the assistance of Iain Marlow, Philip Glamann, Colum Murphy and Jing Li