China attacks US allies in an attempt to thwart Biden’s strategy

Source: Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Getty Images

This week, Joe Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to work harder with the allies to put pressure on China, coordinating with U.S. partners to impose sanctions for alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Beijing’s response: strike back allies with as much force as possible.

China wasted no time on Monday night immediately retaliating with reciprocal sanctions against European Union officials when summoning the bloc’s ambassador to China. Among those affected were politicians from several countries, one of the EU’s main bodies in the formulation of foreign policy and the largest research institute in Europe turned to China.

“It was a pity that they got so deep in their toolbox,” said Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China in Beijing and a member of the board of the China Mercator Institute of Studies, one of the sanctioned entities. Noting that a historic investment agreement between the EU and China reached in December is likely to be put on the back burner, Wuttke said that China appears to be treating its allies more severely than the United States.

“Size is important,” he said. “They are more cautious with the US and go after Canada, Australia and the European Union.”

China’s assertive response in the wake of a rare public disagreement with American officials in Alaska last week shows that President Xi Jinping’s government is digging against international criticism of what it considers “internal issues”, from Xinjiang and Hong Kong to Taiwan . Beijing’s stance risks drawing clearer lines between the geopolitical blocs than occurred under Donald Trump, whose “America First” policy led to a damaging trade war, but also allowed Beijing to make inroads with traditional US allies who felt alienated.

‘Just the beginning’

“This could just be the beginning,” said Bates Gill, professor of Security Studies in Asia-Pacific at Macquarie University in Australia.

“Both sides, China on the one hand and the advanced, typically liberal democracies on the other, will be testing 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 that, especially in the areas of high-tech trade, investment and access to capital markets.”

USA, UK and EU Sanction China Over Abuse of Human Rights

China this week he reached out to 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 its Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on how to combat the hegemony of the US dollar by promoting the yuan and the ruble.

‘Smear China’

“Some Western countries put on a show to defame China, but they should know that the days are past when they could interfere in China’s internal affairs by making lies,” said Wang in southern China’s Guangxi province.

The reaction continued on Tuesday afternoon at the daily Foreign Ministry briefing in Beijing, where spokeswoman Hua Chunying declared Xinjiang a “successful human rights story” while unleashing an unusually broad attack against the EU, Canada and USA, which imposed new sanctions on China this week. On Monday, diplomats from more than 20 countries also met in front of a Beijing court, where former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig was on trial on espionage charges.

China is confronted by demonstration of Western unity in Canadian Attempts

Hua’s criticism lasted for centuries, ranging from his role in the slave trade, imperialism and Nazism to the death of George Floyd and the alleged accumulation of vaccines against the coronavirus. She rejected criticism from countries with “small populations” and scoffed at her coalition as “pseudo-multilateralism”.

“China today is by no means the old China of 120 years ago,” said Hua in an apparent reference to the deal that the imperial powers forced China to sign after the Boxer Rebellion. “The United States, the United Kingdom and other countries should not dream of making China surrender by exerting pressure. I am afraid that they do not have the ability to strangle or strangle China. “

Leading Beijing diplomats set the tone for the most recent rhetoric during Alaskan meetings with the United States, when Politburo member Yang Jiechi made extensive comments attacking America’s human rights record and questioning whether it represented international public opinion. Chinese advertising subsequently praised the sales of T-shirts and cell phone cases with phrases used in the negotiations, including “Stop interfering in China’s internal affairs” and “The United States is not qualified to speak condescendingly to us.”

China’s strictly controlled social media on Tuesday was filled 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 support of government policies in Xinjiang – where the United Nations estimates that more than 1 million Uighurs, mostly ethnic, are held in internment camps.

Still, some expressed concern about the impact on China’s ties to Europe, especially the fate of the Global Investment Agreement with the EU. “Is a new Cold War coming?” I read a Weibo post that received more than 6,000 likes. “Being besieged is not in favor of China.”

China is likely to continue to issue reciprocal sanctions and to strongly criticize coordinated statements, even if it disrupts the EU investment agreement, said Natasha Kassam, a former Australian diplomat who worked on human rights issues in China and is now director of the Lowy institute. Institute. public opinion and foreign policy program.

“Xi Jinping’s logic in China often prevents a rethinking of counterproductive policies,” she said. “And the Chinese authorities seem to be prioritizing a show of strength over global public opinion.”

– With the help of Iain Marlow, Philip Glamann, Colum Murphy and Jing Li