The European Union has reduced itself to a pendulum who keeps on swinging and takes new positions on a daily basis when it comes to China. At a time when the world is determined to punish China for its sins, the EU continues to do a flip-flop over China as it has become increasingly clear that the bloc has no clear cut policy on China. After shielding China in the WHO, the EU has now hit out at China’s state-owned media after it distorted the comments of one of its top officials to present an unbalanced account of a discussion between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Josep Borrell, the EU high representative for foreign affairs.
The Chinese Communist Party has a plethora of state-owned media like Global Times, People’s Daily, etc to name a few who exclusively do the party’s bidding and fool the Chinese people. Earlier this week when Borrel and Yi held discussions, the state-run media expectedly only showed selective parts of the discussions which insinuated that China and the EU are the best of friends.
The EU swinging like a pendulum has now hit out at Chinese state media as it urged the media to stop “selective” and “unacceptable” reporting of remarks. Borrel was quoted by the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry that the EU, “seeks to have dialogue and cooperation with China on the basis of mutual respect, not rivalry or confrontation.”
The EU was enraged as China conveniently left out the mention of “systemic rivalry”. A report in Xinhua said, “has high expectations for its relations with China and will make efforts to ensure closer ties.” The Chinese propaganda tried to portray that the EU was no longer discussing systemic rivalry which was a blatant lie.
The media reports also mentioned that Borrell agreed to China’s view of multilateralism where in fact, the EU has repeatedly stated that its necessary to reform the World Trade Organisation and has also called for greater access to China’s markets.
Systemic rivalry is a strong word in diplomatic language and effectively means that the EU and China are highly competitive with different systems, the EU with a liberal and China with an authoritarian regime. “The Chinese press release gives a selective and unbalanced account of the discussions,” said Virginie Battu-Henriksson, the EU’s foreign affairs spokeswoman.
She further added, “We have made it known to our Chinese counterparts that this incident is unacceptable and that we expect China to present its own positions while the EU presents its own.”
After the meeting with Wang Yi, Borrell admitted that both the sides have discussed in detail about the “systemic rivalry”. Borrell was quoted as saying, “The word ‘rival’ is important in diplomatic language, because it is not a soft word. I can tell you that we have talked a lot about what it means to be a ‘systemic rival.”
This development comes after the EU chose to shield China and fool the world at the WHO. In May, it appeared that China is on the back foot as over 100 countries rallied behind each other to draft a resolution in the 73rd World Health Assembly to review the response of the World Health Organisation in order to draw lessons from it.
Interestingly, even China backed the proposal which was initially drafted by the European Union as the world thought that it has taken the first steps to punish China and the WHO for its sins. However, on a closer look, it turns out that yet again China has managed to fool the world.
Australia has been at the forefront of pushing for an independent investigation into China and had drafted a proposal which demanded an independent inquiry and threatened to put China in the dock. China lobbied with the European Union to fool the world and embarrass Australia as the latter’s proposal was silently junked and a watered-down proposal was drafted by the European Union which only called for a review of the WHO’s response in order to draw lessons from the response, much to China’s delight.
The entire world has been fooled by China into thinking that punitive measures have been taken by the countries in the 73rd World Health Assembly. The seven page proposal does stress on investigating the origins of the virus but desists from directly mentioning China or Wuhan.
Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece Global Times cannot contain its happiness as it claims that Australia got a “slap on the face” and openly admits that EU’s resolution was sponsored by China and the global community has welcomed it.
As if to rub salt in to the wounds, the European Union pledged to back the WHO after US President Donald Trump threatened to pull out of the body if the WHO is unsuccessful in proving that it is not under Chinese influence.
European foreign affairs spokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson said, “This is the time for solidarity, not the time for finger pointing or for undermining multilateral cooperation. The European Union backs the WHO in its efforts to contain and mitigate the COVID-19 outbreak and has already provided additional funding to support these efforts.”
In yet another example which portrays how the EU has been compromised into serving the interests of China, it recently watered-down a report about Beijing’s state-backed “disinformation campaign,” fearing that the Dragon would retaliate by withholding medical supplies. The reference to China’s “disinformation campaign” essentially means China’s massive ‘propaganda war’ to portray itself as the saviour of the world, spreading lies like the US Army spread the novel Coronavirus or scapegoating Italy as a part of COVID-19 origin propaganda or an unnamed Chinese diplomat meddling in the internal affairs of France in an ugly, undiplomatic manner.
But this particular section was removed by the European Union. Why? Because Beijing strong-armed it and warned the EU officials of unspecified repercussions. And then the European Union gave in to the threats to appease the CCP.
The European Union instead of taking the lead in punishing China after Europe was devastated by the virus, meekly surrendered to the CCP. It has no clear policy on China and is just going with the wind. The EU has become a rudderless organisation.
