China’s Year of Europe

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The Forbidden City resolved in the second half of November 2019 that 2020 will be “the Year of Europe” and “the Year of the EU” (which for the Chinese is a blurred distinction - but not so for the Europeans). The initiative will be supervised by Xi Jinping and his inner-circle. Wu Hongbo, the Special Representative for European Affairs, is directly in charge of interaction with Brussels and the implementation of on-going tasks. The decision to undertake this initiative is based on the thorough analysis of the recent visits to China by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in the context of long-range forecasting regarding the situation in Europe.1 Beijing is now convinced that Brussels no longer wary of the increasing Chinese presence in Europe. 

The EU policy is “a pragmatic mix of cooperation and competition.” Ultimately, the EU increasingly considers China as “a strategic partner” rather than “a systemic rival” as the EU did only recently. Hence, Beijing is anticipating a marked expansion of economic relations with the EU. In 2019, the EU is China’s largest trading partner. As well, China is the EU’s second-largest trading partner (with the US still the first). To-date, the 2019 daily average of the China-EU bilateral trade surpassed 1.5 billion Euros ($1.65 billion). Chinese experts are convinced that there is a huge potential for the further growth of bilateral trade in the immediate future. 

The quintessence of Beijing’s decision is moving the focus of China’s political, economic, scientifictechnological, commercial and fiscal activities from the US to the EU. Beijing is encouraged by the tacit support it is getting from Brussels regarding the escalating trade/tariff war with the US and the seeming stalling, if not collapse, of the Sino-US negotiations. On 26 November, Wendy Wu noted in a South China Morning Post article that until recently senior Chinese officials were worried about the EU’s stand about the China-US trade/tariff war. “Those concerns have been allayed by the EU, which has reiterated that it will not take sides in the dispute, and that it disagreed with the US approach to impose tariffs while defying rule-based multilateralism of the World Trade Organization.” Little wonder that Beijing is committed to the historic revamping of the relations with the EU.