Cumbersome and indispensable, hostile and essential: Xi Jinping returns to Europe five years later. Since his last visit, the relationship between East and West has undergone drastic deterioration. Because of him. Before him his initial management of the pandemic between lies and arrogance. Then the support for Putin in the aggression against Ukraine, dictated by the desire to weaken the West. But Xi got away with it, he did not pay substantial prices for the damage done to Europe. Italy’s exit from the New Silk Roads is only a confirmation that the climate has cooled, it has no significant consequences.
Between Elisha and Commission
Xi meets Macron and Ursula von der Leyen. The first is the most determined European voice on the geopolitical front, he goes further than anyone in his support for Ukraine. However, serious sanctions against Beijing for the aid it provides to Russia are not on the agenda. With the President of the Commission the issue will be first and foremost commercial. The recovery of the Chinese economy is entirely driven by exports, there is a new invasion of our markets by “made in China” in every sector, from the most traditional to advanced technologies, from steel to solar panels, from chemicals to electric cars.
Sometimes this invasion is disguised by transiting through third countries, for example in South-East Asia, to bypass barriers. The European Union finds itself dependent on Chinese technologies even for security checks at its borders: the equipment at ports and airports that check containers and baggage is largely made by the People’s Republic.
The internal front
The boom in Chinese exports allows Xi to postpone dealing with its internal problems and with its errors: real estate crash, high youth unemployment, decline in foreign investments. Difficulties partly linked to the socialist and dirigiste swerve taken by the leader, creating a heavier climate for private entrepreneurship. It’s a paradox that Xi owes the relaunch of his growth precisely to the West whose decline he openly theorizes. But in the meantime his bet can still be a winner.
On the one hand he is pragmatically seeking a new balance: inside it espouses a more statist model who is capitalist and at the same time invests in science, technology, innovation, armaments; abroad it “milks” the West as long as it can but strengthens relations with the global South. Its imperial ambitions are visible and disturbing in the Indo-Pacific sphere, with the Philippines paying the most brutal price at the moment. In more distant areas, China presents itself as a benevolent and fairer alternative to the American-centric order.
Brussels’ countermoves
Europe begins to take action in the face of the new invasion. Brussels has opened investigations into unfair Chinese competition in various sectors, from electric cars to biomedical equipment; prepares “green duties” which would hit imports produced in polluting factories. Finally, late and with lesser means, the Union imitates America which in turn adopts the “Chinese recipe” based on industrial policy, state aid. But in certain sectors, Western dependence on Chinese production has become so extreme as to make rebuilding our economic independence problematic.
Xi will then be in Belgrade on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Kosovo war, when the Chinese embassy was bombed and three employees died. It will be an opportunity to reiterate a message that is favorably received in many parts of the world, including Western university campuses: there is only one danger to peace, it is America and its allies.
