Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Three times in the past year we have looked at the European Union’s policy towards China and what appears to be a clear effort to distance itself from the United States.  This week provides a further illustration of this trend.

In March 2012 we highlighted a report from the EU-funded Europe-China Research and Advice Network (Ecran) which argued that the EU should take advantage of the US’s difficulties with China by highlighting the EU’s disinterest in regional disputes.  Noting that the “China-threat discourse” emanates largely from the US, the Ecran report argued: “We should bear in mind too that China poses no military threat to Europe.  Nor is it an exporter of international terrorism.  Its sphere of influence is primarily East and Southeast Asia...where it seeks to protect its borders and to safeguard oil exploration projects in the South China Sea.  It also aspires to develop a second line of defence through a naval presence in the Indian Ocean and potentially the Pacific.  But in neither case are European interests directly involved – something that promises to benefit the EU in its engagement with China.”

Particularly surprisingly, given the EU’s ostensible commitment to universal human rights, the Ecran report argued that even though it did not expect any improvement in Chinese human rights in the next five years, change should be left to come from within.  In other words, the EU’s commercial and economic interests (including continuing Chinese support of the euro) were seen to outrank both trans-Atlantic solidarity and support for human rights.

Providing evidence that this was not a one-off maverick report from an EU-linked institution, but rather part of a clear trend in EU strategic thinking, in December 2012 the EU-funded European Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) published a report in which it concluded that China “presents a strategic opportunity to enhance Europe’s role in world affairs and gain autonomy from the US”. 

Then, in our 13 March 2013 briefing, we highlighted another EUISS report on EU-China relations: “Brussels-Beijing: Changing the Game?” which, inter alia, warned the EU against “becoming directly involved in Washington’s current build-up of military and diplomatic pressure on China”.  This report also said that “those countries in the region disputing territories with China…cannot expect much from the EU in terms of robust support in the continuation of aggressive Chinese policies” relating to these disputes. 

Our briefing on this report concluded that the EU remains determined to maintain the best possible relations with China, even if this clashes with the interests of the United States, Japan, and the smaller countries of Southeast Asia.

Now an Alert published during the past week by the EUISS returns to the subject of the EU in Asia, arguing that – like the United States – the European Union has also made a ‘pivot’, albeit a smaller one, towards Asia.  And, as with the previous reports highlighted above, it appears to see Europe as being in competition with the US in Asia, and the solution to winning this competition to be to differentiate the EU from the US by being less confrontational with China.

The 26 March EUISS Alert argues: “The European ‘pivot’ provides a broadly complementary - rather than alternative – political presence to that of the US, in particular in promoting sets of multilateral-based rules and standards.  Yet there is a major difference between the two: Washington’s rebalancing towards Asia seems primarily aimed at keeping China in check.  By focusing on strengthening its security alliances in the area, the US pivot risks (if not properly managed) causing increased polarisation and the emergence of zero-sum ‘great games’.  The European pivot, by contrast, is untrammelled by binding military alliances and is not aimed at/against any particular country in the region.  It is no coincidence that it is in places like Beijing, Seoul, Delhi and the ASEAN Secretariat that the European pivot has found some of its strongest supporters.”

There must be some doubt as to exactly how enthusiastic “Seoul, Delhi, and the Asean secretariat” really are about a European Union policy the main pillar of which would seem to be avoiding any confrontation with China that might undermine EU economic interests, but that such a policy is enthusiastically received in Beijing cannot be doubted.  Washington might also be wondering exactly how “complementary” the EU’s policy towards China is to the US’s.