Illustration by Ann Kiernan for POLITICO By Stuart Lau BEIJING CRITICS IN BRUSSELS call it the April Fool’s Day Summit. The agenda of the virtual meeting between China’s top officials and the presidents of the European Council and the Commission includes issues of “common interest” such as climate change, biodiversity and health, and calls on the European Union to resume talks on Human Rights. But under the talks will be only one important issue: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and what it means for China-West relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive war – and the West ‘s failure to prepare for it – has raised alarm in European capitals, raising concerns that the continent has become too comfortable with another authoritarian country with the potential for war. There is only one problem. Europe has no clear idea what to do about it. “We will see at the April Summit if the EU is already able to apply the lessons learned recently by Russia in its relations with China,” said Reinhard Bütikofer, a senior member of the German Green Party and chairman of the European Parliament delegation. on relations with China. . Friday’s meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Commission President Ursula von der Layen and Council President Charles Michel will not produce a joint statement. The leaders do not plan to hold a joint press conference. EU officials have said there will be no deliveries. Thus, for many Chinese observers, the real questions that the summit will answer are: To what extent has Europe learned from its mistakes with Putin? And is Beijing really going to start pushing more? “In the past, China has succeeded in creating a wedge between the EU and the US by offering Europe carrots in areas such as market access and climate,” said Noah Barkin, a visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. think tank. “It would not be surprising if Xi tried again at the April 1 summit.” On the other hand, Barkin added, European officials “will want messages from Xi that there are red lines in China’s relationship with Russia – that there are limits to what Beijing will follow.” [with]. »

Frozen relationships

Tensions between China and the EU were rising even before Russia invaded Ukraine, but Putin’s embrace of Putin before and during the conflict took them to a new level. When Xi last set foot in Western Europe in March 2019, the Chinese president noted what a new – and, for him, slightly offensive – label the EU had used to describe Beijing in what it then was was a recent strategy paper. “I thought we were good friends,” Xi told the French, Germans and Commission leaders. “But now, are we systemic adversaries?” The intervening years did little to improve relations, as the coronavirus pandemic highlighted Europe’s dependence on Chinese industry, and human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Xinjiang escalated into a series of salvos. A planned EU-China investment deal went viral last year and the dispute over Lithuania-Taiwan relations has erupted into a trade dispute between two of the world’s largest economic blocs. During the pandemic, senior Communist Party officials adopted a new political slogan: dōngshēng xījiàng, meaning the rise of the east and the descent of the west. The rationale behind this included China’s belief that it had “systemic advantages” in tackling the coronavirus, as well as a long-held belief that its state-backed technological advancement would soon enable it to overthrow the Western world order. It was in this light that China’s strategic alignment with Russia was born. Putin’s last trip outside Russia before the war was to Beijing, where he attended the Winter Olympics and signed what the Chinese call a “no-limit” cooperation agreement with Xi. The agreement between the two men stated the intention to challenge the Western order based on democracy, freedoms and human rights. It was quickly denounced by European officials. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Moscow and Beijing were seeking to replace existing international rules. Its foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, described the joint statement as a “revisionist manifesto for world order”, adding that “Russia and China are becoming increasingly dynamic, eager to rebuild the old empires of the past.” . . » The war in Ukraine has caused a shiver of fear in already frozen relations, as Beijing’s embrace of the Kremlin, even as Russian bombs destroy Ukrainian cities, crystallizes the view in many European capitals of China as a potential challenger to the world. after the Cold War. and security architecture. Chinese officials have expressed concern about the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, but have refrained from criticizing Russia. Beijing abstained from a majority of UN votes condemning Moscow’s aggression, and a Chinese judge in the UN Supreme Court has ruled against Ukraine’s attempt to urge Russia to end the war. Xi – who once called Putin his “best friend” – has emerged as one of the biggest obstacles to the West’s efforts to inflict financial pain on Russia to punish it for invading Ukraine. Beijing has attacked Western sanctions and vowed to continue operating as usual with Russia. EU leaders have also warned that China has considered providing military assistance to Russia, according to a senior EU official, and Beijing has stepped up Kremlin discussions, condemning NATO’s description of Russia as an “invasion”. As “stupid and shameless.” Two days before the EU-China summit and more than a month after the war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov traveled to China and met with his counterpart Wang Yi. Wang, according to Chinese state media, told Lavrov that “China-Russia relations have withstood the new test of changing international momentum” and “showed a persistent momentum for growth.” “China is willing to cooperate with Russia,” Wang added. On the Ukraine issue, he praised Russia’s efforts to “prevent large-scale humanitarian crises.”

Western warnings

Ahead of the summit, Western officials have warned of consequences for Beijing if it blocks the push against Russian aggression. During his European tour last week, US President Joe Biden said he called on the EU and NATO to set up a new task force to monitor violations of sanctions against Russia by people like China. His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, also warned that there would be “absolutely” “consequences” if Beijing helped Moscow avoid sanctions. “I did not threaten [to Xi] “But I pointed out the number of American and foreign companies that had left Russia as a result of this barbaric behavior,” Biden told a news conference in Brussels last week, recalling a phone call he had with the Chinese leader. He added that China “understands that its economic future is much more closely linked to the West than to Russia.” Berd Lang, chairman of the European Parliament’s trade committee, also said that Beijing must take into account Europe’s determination. “If China chose to side with Russia and support its aggressive war, it should be clear that two things would happen: there would be an extremely high economic price to pay and they would divide the world into these blocks correctly warned. for a long time, “said Lang, a German MEP from the Socialist and Democrat groups and from the same party as German Chancellor Olaf Solz. “This can not be in anyone’s interest, neither in the interest of Europe, nor in the interest of China.” Jörg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, who has lived in Beijing for a quarter of a century, said the sanctions against Russia “showed the determination of European governments, companies and people”. “The break-up with Russia will be almost complete, indicating what the West may be willing to pay if China sided with Russia.”

The words in inaction

Despite the declarations of determination, however, von der Leyen and Michel will have to satisfy a wide range of member states when talking to their Chinese counterparts. “There will be people who will say, ‘This is an opportunity to separate China from Russia, and we must invoke their common sense or their material interests,’” said Aaron Friedberg, a Princeton University academic and author of the recently published ” China’s mistake “. “I think it has become clear that Xi Jinping has no intention of doing that,” Friedberg said. “China is not going to abandon its relationship with Russia.” Some smaller EU countries, such as Lithuania and the Czech Republic, have sought to mobilize a common response, warning that while the conflict with Russia is burning, the conflict with China is advancing just as relentlessly. “If the war in Ukraine is a hurricane, then in that light China is climate change,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský told local media last week. However, major EU countries, including Germany and France, have backed a compromise, with diplomats saying they hoped to prevent Beijing from helping Moscow. They argue that it would be premature to criticize China for its current position, as there is still no evidence, for example, that China is arming Russia. And then there is the extreme in Hungary. Last week, as …