As the European Union seeks to play a greater economic and political role in
world affairs, it is paying particular attention to developing its strategic relations with
China, independently from its links with the United States. Although both Europeans
and Americans share many common objectives in coping with China's growing power,
in some important areas their interests differ, and there has as yet been no serious attempt
to coordinate EU and U.S. approaches toward Beijing.
At a time when the two sides of the Atlantic are still seeking to overcome the consequences
of serious political rifts over Iraq, there is a growing risk that differing
strategies toward China will create new conflicts in the Transatlantic relationship.
Contrary to many of its official declarations
and those of its member states,
the European Union's attempts to develop
a strategic approach toward China
lag far behind those of the United States,
and have so far mainly been in the fields
of trade and economics. The European
Union is manifestly unable to bring the
same military and diplomatic weight to
bear in its relations with Beijing as the
United States.
Nevertheless, partly as a result of its
enlargement in May 2004 and the higher
value of the euro against the dollar, the
European Union may for the first time
become China's largest trading partner
in 2005. The EU trade deficit with China
in 2003 was less than half that of the
United States. These growing economic
ties and interdependency will have
strategic consequences for the political
relationship between the European
Union and China. As a result, Europe
and the United States will in future have
to address more potentially divisive
transnational and regional issues beyond
Europe's borders, including Europe's relations
with Asia and China.
While China is still hoping for the
kind of "multipolar world" also frequently
advocated by France, the Europeans
are implementing step by step
their Common Foreign and Security
Policy (CFSP) as well as their European
Security and Defense Policy (ESDP).
Both policies are intended to give the
European Union a stronger voice of its
own on the world stage. As the European
Security Strategy released in December
2003 indicates, the European Union is
slowly defining its first global security
concept, which will identify Europe's security
interests worldwide, including in
Asia, for the years to come.
Whether or not the United States
welcomes these strategic trends, and a
stronger EU political role in Asia
(which seems disputed in the United
States), Washington will hardly be able
to prevent the emergence of stronger
economic and political ties between
Europe and Asia. As a union of 25
states with more than 450 million
people, producing a quarter of the
world's economic output, and with a
wide spectrum of international policy
instruments at its disposal, the European
Union is inevitably becoming a global
player.
These strategic trends, however, are
complicated by the fact that the European
Union is not only becoming generally
more united, but also sometimes
more fractured a phenomenon that
may hamper its goal of stronger security
integration. Despite its new Security
Strategy, for instance, the European
Union's main member states (Britain,
France and Germany) still define their
China policies largely in the light of
their own trade and economic interests.
Consequently, they often overlook the
European Union's long-term security interests
in the Asia-Pacific region, as outlined
in numerous EU and national
foreign policy documents on China.
Against this background, the French
and German proposal to lift the 15-yearold
EU arms embargo on Beijing, imposed
after the 1989 Tiananmen Square
massacre, has provoked harsh criticism
in the United States, which maintains a
ban on military sales to Beijing. Washington
disagrees with the European
Union about the severity of human
rights violations in China and is particularly
concerned that China may accelerate
its impressive military modernization
over the last ten years with European
technological support. Such a development,
according to U.S. officials, could
undermine stability in the Asia-Pacific
region in general and in the Taiwan
Strait in particular.
As a result, Washington is now becoming
more interested in the European
Union's China policies, which hitherto it
has tended to overlook, if not dismiss as
irrelevant. So far, however, very few joint
Transatlantic study groups have analyzed
the differences and commonalities of EU
and U.S. China policies or tried to enhance
understanding of American and
European views on China's future regional
and international role. If both
sides continue to neglect the differences
in their China strategies and interests,
a serious new Transatlantic conflict
may be only a matter of time. In both
Europe and the United States, arrogance
and a tendency to adopt unilateral
strategies are sowing the seeds of future
discord.
These strategic trends also reflect the
increasing "globalization of security
policies" in Europe and China, as well as
in the United States. Despite many positive
developments in its strategy, however,
the European Union is still having
difficulty finding the right balance between
its economic and security interests
in its China policy.
The European Union's efforts to
forge a coherent, long-term approach to
China date from the publication of its
guidelines for a "Comprehensive Partnership
with China" in June 1998. The
aim was both to develop a balanced
China policy that reflected China's
growing international economic and
political weight and to further the development
of the European Union's fledgling
CFSP.
Although China has not always been
an easy partner, both sides have significantly
increased their bilateral relationship
during the last decade. Since 2000,
EU aid programs to Beijing have included
help with China's accession to the
World Trade Organization, the fight
against illegal migration and trafficking
in human beings, social security reform,
telecommunications and information
technology, the environment, energy and
human resource development.
In contrast to the European Commission's
first China strategy paper of
July 1995, in which bilateral economic
interests still dominated the agenda, the
1998 guidelines sought to develop a political
dialogue with China at a regional
and global level. According to a further
Asia Strategy paper of September 2001,
Europe intends to engage more actively
in the Asia-Pacific region, "commensurate
with the growing global weight of
an enlarged European Union."
As the spread of international terrorism
has irrefutably shown, the globalization
of economics and security has
drastically shortened the geographical
and psychological distance between
Asia and Europe. The proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction and ballistic
missiles, and the existence of secret
interregional proliferation networks, has
made Europe increasingly vulnerable to
religious fundamentalism, international
terrorism, political crises and military
conflicts originating outside its own
continent.
The European Union has now recognized
these new security threats, not
only in its Security Strategy, but also in
its Strategy against the Proliferation of
Weapons of Mass Destruction, also approved
in December 2003, bringing European
security concerns broadly in line
with those of the United States. European
identification of the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction weapons
as a key threat to Europe was also reflected
in a joint U.S.-EU statement in
June 2003.
It is in this wider context that the European
Union, as an increasingly ambitious
global actor, is seeking the systematic
integration of China into the international
community and China's transformation
into a country that respects the rule of law
and international human rights. The European Union wants to engage Beijing because
it sees China as one of the most important
power brokers in world politics,
whose cooperation is needed to secure important
European economic and political
interests.
Moreover, the divergent policies of
EU member states toward China are increasingly
considered to be disadvantageous
for European political integration
and the long-term interests of the member
states. Leading EU officials have repeatedly
stated that the CFSP must be
forcefully developed as a further tier of
European integration and identity,
strengthening the European Union's potential
role as a participant in discussions
of Asian security.
The European Union's growing political
ties to Asia already include security
cooperation. The European Union
is a member of the ASEAN Regional
Forum (ARF) and also of the European
Committee of the Council for Security
and Cooperation in Asia-Pacific
(CSCAP). The European Commission is
a participant in the Korean Peninsula
Energy Development Organization
(KEDO). More broadly, since 1996, regular
Ministerial gatherings in the so called
Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)
have greatly strengthened high-level political
and economic ties between Europe
and China and the rest of Asia.
The future of EU-China relations,
however, will increasingly be affected by
global policy issues arising outside China
and Europe. The European Union and
China will thus have to assume more responsibilities
for global political and
economic stability, including a substantial
engagement in regional security in
the Middle East and Central Asia. Such
moves could be complicated by differences
in national interests, given that,
with their growing energy demands,
both China and the European Union are
becoming increasingly economically dependent
on these highly politically sensitive
regions. It cannot be totally excluded
that China and Europe may see each
other in the future as "strategic competitors,"
leading to strategic rivalry in the
Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and
Central Asia.
On the other hand, their common
dependence on the energy resources of
the Middle East and Central Asia makes
both China and the European Union interested
in the maintenance of political
stability in these regions. Apart from their
increasing ties in trade and investments,
the growing energy interdependence between
Europe and China, on the one
hand, and the Middle East/Central Asia,
on the other, argues in favor of common
EU-China strategies toward this increasingly
fragile "arc of instability."
In its latest policy paper, A Maturing
Partnership Shared Interests and Challenges
in EU-China Relations, published
in September 2003, the Commission
states that "the European Union and
China have an ever-greater interest in
working together as strategic partners to
safeguard and promote sustainable development,
peace and stability." The
paper proposes a comprehensive list of
short and medium term actions in five
priority areas:
- A political dialogue addressing
global and regional governance and security
issues, including non-proliferation
and arms control, international
crime, illegal migration, the situation on
the Korean Peninsula and other world
trouble spots.
- Support for China's transition to
an open society based on the rule of law
and respect for human rights.
- The promotion of China's internal
and external economic liberalization,
including China's compliance with its
WTO commitments and close monitoring
of new regional trade initiatives in
Asia to ensure their WTO-compatibility.
- The EU-China cooperation program,
which will include new initiatives
such as the fight against SARS.
- Raising the European Union's
profile in China.
Surprisingly perhaps, the paper includes
strengthened EU relations with
Taiwan in its priorities for political dialogue
with Beijing. After stressing the European
Union's insistence on a resolution
of the Taiwan issue through peaceful dialogue,
and the importance of growing
economic ties for an improvement in the
political climate, the paper underlines
"EU interest in closer links with Taiwan
in non-political fields, including in multilateral
contexts, in line with the European
Union's 'One-China' policy."
The reference to stronger relations
with Taiwan is probably due to repeated
criticisms in the European Parliament of
official and unofficial EU policies toward
Taiwan and Tibet. In 2002, the Parliament
stated that it "cannot accept President Jiang
Zemin's recent remarks that China reserves
the right to use military force in its disputes
with Taiwan," and insisted that a peaceful
resolution of the Taiwan question was crucial
for greater political and economic stability
in the region.
The European Parliament has also
expressed its concern that, in its defense
White Paper of October 2000, China
identified the United States as its principal
threat and "has supported regional
groupings which exclude the United
States, rather than pan-Pacific ones, even
setting up its own version of [the] Davos
[World Economic Forum] at Bao on
Hainan Island, to which no Americans
were invited."
In the Parliament's frequently stated
view, the Commission does not pay
enough attention to Beijing's continuing
violations of human and minority rights.
And while the Parliament's current influence
on EU foreign policy is limited, it is
likely to grow in future, increasing the
likelihood of a hostile reaction to its criticisms
in Beijing. The growing influence
of non-governmental organizations and
more critical media coverage of China
are likely to have the same effect.
China for its part has yet to give a
clear answer to the question of what role
it wants the European Union to play in
its future global strategy. Although Beijing
has repeatedly declared its dislike for
a unipolar world dominated by an American
"hyperpower," China's foreign and
security policies toward the European
Union are not free of contradictions.
Thus the Chinese government, for instance,
seems ambivalent about the European Union's membership in the ASEAN
Regional Forum and, more broadly, about
the prospect of a politically united Europe
becoming more involved in regional conflict
resolution, not only in the Korean
peninsula but also in the South China Sea
or even in the Taiwan Strait. China has repeatedly
stressed that the two latter issues
are bilateral problems, in which neither
the United States nor the European
Union, nor any other foreign power, has
the right to intervene.
Officially, Beijing favors a stronger
European Union on the world stage, including
in the Asia-Pacific region, in line
with its support for "multipolarity." In
October 2003, China for the first time
published an official strategy paper on
EU-China relations. That was in itself
interesting because Beijing has not released
a similar paper on its relationship
with ASEAN, the United States or any
other regional grouping or major state.
"There is no fundamental conflict of
interest between China and the European
Union, and neither side poses a
threat to the other," the paper says.
"However, given their differences in historical
background, cultural heritage,
political systems and economic development
levels, it is natural that the two
sides have different views or even disagree
on some issues. Nevertheless,
China-EU relations of mutual trust and
mutual benefit cannot and will not be
affected if the two sides address their disagreements
in a spirit of equality and
mutual respect."
The paper outlines major principles
guiding bilateral relations with the European
Union, particularly concerning the
"One-China" policy with regard to Taiwan.
It draws a series of "red lines" for
future EU-China relations by demanding
that the European Union:
- Prohibit any visit by any Taiwanese
political figure to the European
Union or its member countries under
whatever name or pretext, and not engage
in any contact or exchange of an
official or governmental nature with
Taiwanese authorities.
- Not support Taiwan's accession to
or participation in any international organization
whose membership requires
statehood, and acknowledge that Taiwan's
entry into the WTO in the name of Chinese
Taipei does not mean any change in
Taiwan's status as part of China.
- Not sell Taiwan any weapons,
equipment, goods, materials or technology
that can be used for military
purposes.
With regard to Tibet, China asks the
European Union "not to have any contact
with the Tibetan government in
exile" or "provide facilities to the separatist
activities of the Dalai clique."
These demands clash directly with the
Commission's latest China paper, and
even more sharply with the numerous
declarations of the European Parliament.
Besides these differences and potential
conflicts, China calls for closer political
cooperation to "uphold the UN's
authority" and to support UN reforms,
as well as to advance cooperation in the
ASEM "on the basis of equality." Beijing
also says it favors closer cooperation in
fighting terrorism and safeguarding international arms control regimes and efforts.
These include the "prevention of
the weaponization of, and an arms race
in, outer space," by which it means U.S.
plans for missile defense.
China also wants to strengthen military-
to-military exchanges and progressively
develop a "strategic security
consultation mechanism," grouping security
and defense experts. Beijing thus
seems to be offering a much more intense
dialogue on global security issues,
not least to play off Europe against the
United States.
That motive is particularly evident
in China's most immediately controversial
demand, which is that the European
Union lift its ban on arms exports to
China "at an early date" so as to "remove
barriers to greater cooperation on
defense industry and technologies." The
issue is particularly important to China,
which now has probably the world's
third largest defense budget, after the
United States and Russia, but lacks
sources of weapons supplies.
China's defense spending is increasing
faster than both its GDP and its annual
state budget. It has become the
world's largest arms importer since 2000.
But it is heavily dependent on purchases
of Russian high-tech weaponry, owing to
the inadequate output of its own arms
industry and the Western arms embargo.
President Vladimir Putin, however,
has put additional constraints on Russia's
weapon exports and technology
transfers to China. In contrast to Russia's
growing military technology cooperation
with India, Moscow has been unwilling
to develop new weapons with
Beijing or to let China have nuclear
bombers or missiles with a range of
more than 300km to 500km.
Within the European Union, France
has taken the lead in pushing for the lifting
of the EU embargo. On March 16,
2004, France even held joint naval exercises
with China for the first time, just
four days before Taiwan's presidential
elections, which Beijing called "the most
comprehensive military exercise ever held
between China and a foreign country."
French policy reflects not only the
shared enthusiasm of Paris and Beijing
for a "multipolar world," but also hopes
that the French and European arms industries
will be able to sell more
weapons systems to China, particularly
dual-use technologies. In the same vein,
French President Jacques Chirac recently
joined Chinese President Hu Jintao in
officially condemning Taiwan's controversial
referendum on the threat it sees
from China in March 2004 as "irresponsible"
and a threat to Asia although Mr.
Chirac's policy of rapprochement toward
Beijing has been highly controversial
in French public opinion. France has
also recently sought out China's support
in the UN Security Council in negotiations
with the United States over Iraq.
Both Mr. Chirac and German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder have argued
that China has made sufficient progress
in political and economic reform since
1989 for the arms embargo to be lifted.
Moreover, the European arms industry
(including groups such as EADS) has
begun to shift its business strategies toward the Asian, and particularly the Chinese
market. Although would-be arms
exporters often overestimate China's
willingness and ability to buy large
quantities of high-tech weapons, Beijing
is certainly very interested in acquiring
specific niche technologies and minor
weapons systems such as radar, air-to-air
missiles, sonar equipment, torpedoes
and other important force multipliers to
increase the fighting capabilities of both
its old and new weapons systems.
German and EU officials have denied
that the lifting of the embargo
would lead to a significant increase in
transfers of high-tech weaponry to
China because arms exports would still
be barred under a separate EU Code of
Conduct aimed at preventing sales to repressive
states or unstable areas. Germany's
national regulations on arms
exports are also stricter than those of
France and Britain.
Unlike the embargo, however, the
Code is not legally binding, and its political
restraints have become insufficient,
as the present debate on the EU arms
embargo is itself demonstrating. With
speculation in London that Britain may
join France and Germany in supporting
an end to the embargo, there is now talk
of strengthening the Code to include a
requirement that weapons sold to China
must not be used "for external aggression
or internal repression."
The EU member states, however,
have not really addressed the question of
whether the Code can effectively prevent
the export not only of major weaponry
but also of increasingly important dual use
technologies. These dual-use technologies
often do not meet the criteria of
being "lethal" for the purposes of export
prevention. They nonetheless significantly
augment China's military modernization
and its ability to project
power. Unlike in the past, there is no
major high-tech weapons system today
that is composed of exclusively military
technologies. In this respect, the EU
Code is rather liberal and does not really
address the critical gray area of dual-use
technologies.
The arms embargo is not the only
specific issue on which Brussels has had
its differences with Washington. The European
Union has invited China to take
part in its $3.25 billion Galileo GPS observation
satellite project, which has
both civilian and military uses. Beijing
has not only happily accepted the offer,
and pledged $230 million to help develop
the project (a similar accord exists
between the European Union and India),
but has also put pressure on the European
Union to gain access to Galileo's
sensitive military data and technologies.
After a difficult discussion with the
United States, the European Union has
declined that request.
It should not be forgotten, however,
that the European arms industry has already
supported China's military modernization
in recently years by delivering
dual-use technologies (mostly from
Britain) that are being used in military
aircraft, attack helicopters and submarines.
The background to these sales
is the emergence of a global "buyer's
market" for arms during the 1990s. Since
the end of the Cold War, overall defense
spending has declined and arms manufacturers
have been left with considerable
over-capacity in a shrinking global
arms market. This has allowed weapons
purchasing countries to shop around for
the best deals and play off one supplier
against another. It has put enormous
pressure on the U.S., Russian and European
arms industries to sell even the
most modern high-tech weaponry, and
transfer sensitive technologies, to countries
with which they might once have
been reluctant to conduct such business.
The U.S. government, however, remains
strongly opposed to the lifting of
the EU arms embargo against China and
has been campaigning hard against the
proposal since the beginning of 2004.
One reason for Washington's opposition
is that an end to the EU embargo would
make it harder for the United States to
retain its own ban, also imposed in 1989.
U.S. officials argue that although the
human-rights situation in China has undeniably
improved since 1989, China's
record is still very questionable. The Bush
administration, for instance, has recently
sponsored a resolution at the UN Commission
on Human Rights in Geneva
criticizing Beijing's human rights record
for the first time in three years. In Washington's
view, China has not fulfilled
commitments it made in 2002, for example
to grant the International Committee
of the Red Cross access to its prisons a
promise initially made on the eve of
President's Bill Clinton's first meeting
with Chinese President Jiang Zemin
more than ten years ago. In response,
China has suspended its human rights
dialogue with the United States.
Washington also argues that any increase
in China's military capabilities
would increase the political influence of
the Chinese armed forces, and that
weapons exports, and particularly technology
transfers, heighten the risks of
proliferation. China's accelerating economic
and political reforms have weakened
state control over the country's
already inefficient export-control system,
although Beijing has recently
adopted new measures to strengthen it.
Washington could well act to prevent
any European country that sells arms to
China from having access to U.S. military
technology.
Beijing intensified pressure on the
European Union to lift the embargo before
EU enlargement in May 2004, fearing
that the new EU member countries
in Central and Eastern Europe would be
more sympathetic to the U.S. position.
The European Union, however, has not
yet made a final decision.
Meanwhile, the European Union has
made reciprocal demands on China to
take more concrete steps to improve
human rights, such as ratifying the International
Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, which China signed in 1998. In
Germany, the Green Party, the junior
member of the government coalition,
wants to maintain the embargo because
of China's continuing human rights violations,
while the European Parliament
has passed a resolution by an overwhelming
majority demanding that the
embargo be maintained.
The Parliament shares the view that
China has not made enough progress in
improving its human rights record. It
also believes that now is the wrong time
to lift the embargo, in view of Beijing's
military threats against Taiwan and its
unwillingness to dismantle the 500 missiles
it has aimed at the island. The decision
is now likely to be put off until the
next EU-China summit meeting scheduled
for October.
If the decision were to go in favor of
lifting the embargo, the European Union
would risk a severe reaction from Washington.
For while the United States and
the European Union often share similar
overall visions about how to deal with
the rise of China, both are sometimes
guided by different strategies and varying
priorities in pursuit of their policy goals.
The European Union itself often has
difficulty reaching a consensus because its
larger and smaller members have different
historical, economic and political ties
to China and the rest of Asia. Even the
main European trading partners of China
still have problems finding the right mix
between their economic and political interests
in their policies toward Beijing.
In the words of Kay Moeller, an expert
at the German Institute for International
and Security Affairs (SWP) in
Berlin, "Any China policy will be a mix
of three major elements: economic considerations,
world order considerations,
and considerations of regional (Asian)
order and security. Unsurprisingly, the
European Union has been strongest on
the economy, weakest on the region, and
wavering on world order, which is a clear
contrast with the attempts made by successive
U.S. administrations somehow to
balance all three."
"Both sides of the Atlantic have to
choose whether to adopt increasingly
unilateral strategies or define a common
approach to the rise of China."
Nevertheless, EU security cooperation
with Asia is not only continuing, but
also widening and deepening. As it adopts
an increasingly global outlook, the European
Union's strategic interest in stability
and security challenges in the Asia-Pacific
region will inevitably continue to grow.
The United States and the European
Union still tend to overestimate their
own power and influence and underestimate
the many strategic challenges with
which they will have to cope in the coming
years. More than ever before, they
need to cooperate and to develop common
strategies to deal successfully with
the numerous new security challenges
around the world.
Whatever the European Union decides
on the arms embargo in the coming
months, it has been short-sighted not to
have consulted more closely with Washington,
given that the American and European
bans on arms sales to China are
complementary and were imposed for
the same reasons. The European Union
also needs to establish clear criteria for
future sales of military equipment, and
particularly transfers of dual-use technologies,
not just because of China.
The United States, on the other
hand, should recognize that the European
Union's economic and political interests
in China and Asia will continue to
grow, and so will its security interests.
Both sides of the Atlantic have to choose
whether they will adopt increasingly
unilateral strategies or whether they have
the political will to define a common
approach to deal with the regional and
global rise of China. A Transatlantic dialogue
on China and Asia is long overdue.
The dispute over the arms embargo is
just one indicator of the need for Europe
and the United States to work much
more closely together on this fundamental
and complex strategic challenge.
Frank Umbach is Resident Fellow and Head of the Asia-Pacific Program at the
Research Institute of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). He is
also Co-Chair of the European Committee
of the Council for Security Cooperation in Asia-Pacific, the most important
regional "tract
two-Diplomacy" institution for security policies in Asia-Pacific. This analysis stems from an ongoing
research project, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, on future relations between the European
Union and China at the Research Institute.
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