Beneath all the upbeat rhetoric about a new era in EU-China friendship, what are the realities of Brussels-Beijing relations? Dirk Sterckx, Chairman of the European Parliament’s China Delegation, reports both on comfort zones and sore points
My opposite numbers at China’s National People's Congress sprang something of a surprise when preparing the agenda for our mid-year inter-parliamentary meeting. As well as issues like energy efficiency and climate change, rural development in China and human rights, our Chinese colleagues wanted to be briefed on developments within the European Union. This led to questions from on the relationship between member states and the Union, on the role of regions and on sovereignty. Eventually I had to cut short the debate with our European Parliament delegation in Beijing as it would have gone on for hours, and it certainly gave the Chinese a glimpse of Europe’s highly charged internal debate.
Clearly there is a keen interest in Beijing in the state of our Union. Not just on topics like trade and technology but also the political role the EU plays and doesn’t play in the world. The Chinese make it very clear that they count on the EU to balance the weight of the United States and want us to defend the need for a truly multilateral approach to global problems. Beijing counts on us to stand by China on Iran and Darfur, and they are evidently more at ease with us because we have no military presence in East Asia.
The EU-China relationship has different characteristics than the China’s relationship with other major powers like the US, Japan or Russia, and these differences will influence many of the things we Europeans do in the next 50 years.
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MATTERS OF OPINION |
Money isn't making the Chinese happier China is getting rich quick. The number of households that own microwave ovens, computers, stereos, and home telephones has more than doubled nationwide during the past 10 years. Yet while the Chinese express great optimism about their lives in the future, levels of happiness have been decreasing over the last 10 years, according to surveys conducted by Gallup in 1997, 1999 and 2004. A growing portion of the population says that they are dissatisfied with the amount and quality of the food they get, their housing, standard of living and the way they spend their leisure time. They are most unhappy of all with the amount of savings they have. At the same time, the wealth gap between people who live in Chinese cities and those living in the countryside has shot up. Whereas 10 years ago, rural-dwellers earned just over half as much money as urbanites, today they earn barely a third as much as city-dwellers, even though their own income has continued to rise over that time.  http://www.gallupworldpoll.com/ |
The relationship between the EU and China is now more than 30 years old, and it covers policy areas that range from foreign affairs to trade and from human rights to culture and education. Our relationship has developed at much the same hectic pace with which Chinese society is renewing itself, and it follows the growing interest we in Europe have in what happens in East Asia. Most of the frustration, ignorance and suspicion that formerly overshadowed the relationship have now disappeared, and after 30 years I believe both sides are ready for the next step.
Along what lines should negotiations for a more strategic partnership with China be conducted? Beijing very clearly insists on "respect", and certainly our parliamentary colleagues do not want to be lectured. At the same time, I have yet to feel that any subject had to be avoided; on the contrary, the Chinese show themselves as open to anything we put on the table. Any question that is not brought forward with respect, though, will never get an answer. The Chinese never say things bluntly, but it is clear that history still has an influence on our relationship and that the legacy of the last two centuries is still there. We Europeans forced the Chinese emperor to open up his empire, and to many Chinese, we − and others from outside − caused their country’s destabilisation. It has taken China a very long time and much internal strife to return to the stability it now has.
China has, meanwhile, truly opened itself to the world, and over the last 30 years, has become an increasingly active member of the international community. It’s not hard to understand the amazement of the Chinese themselves when sometimes we westeners address them with overtones of moral superiority. The Chinese are no longer willing to be lectured by Europe or by anybody else.
It is nevertheless my strong conviction that we in the EU have to insist on Beijing’s respect of human, political and social rights. This will remain an important topic in everything we do together in the coming decades. We can and must defend our idea of individual and universal human rights. The Chinese accept that human rights are universal and that there are no "Asian" or "European" human rights. But it is also clear that there are considerable differences in interpretation, and in focus.
The Chinese regularly stress that their first priority is economic development. Individual rights are important, but if they threaten to obstruct economic progress they come second. When discussing China’s economic success, they emphasise the huge distance they still have to travel if they are to bring an acceptable living standard to all their people. They see ending poverty as a form of human rights.
Chinese parliamentarians also give the impression at times that they do not think highly of our brand of democracy, because to them it is far too chaotic. They even argue that democracy has been known to give rise to corruption, and therefore fear that it would lead to instability in their country, which is what they fear the most because it could so easily kill their economic development. To them, there is no alternative to the power and organisation of the Communist Party, and I have to say that I have heard not a few European businesspeople and politicians agreeing with that.
For myself, I disagree. There have been successful experiments at local level. The Municipal People’s Congress features a good many high-quality representatives, even if they were not elected in the way we elect our own representatives. But much, perhaps too much, depends on these individual politicians’ goodwill and capability, rather than on the well-defined and rigorously maintained rule of law. If the EU and China are to deepen their relationship, China will have to speed up, widen and deepen its democratic development. It will have to establish and maintain a much stronger independent legal system; not to please western public opinion, but because without these improvements their economic development will at some point run into trouble.
Can all this be achieved in the foreseeable future? There are already signs that things are moving in the right direction. Both property and labour laws have clearly taken a step forward over the last ten years. The Chinese government has put intellectual property rights regulation in place and is trying hard to enforce it. More and more Chinese companies have realised that this is not only in the interest of foreign companies but in their own interest too. Environmental policies are a very urgent problem in China and are receiving more and more attention. At every interparliamentary meeting of the European Parliament and the National People’s Congress the Chinese delegates press for exchanges of information, ideas and good practice on the environment. But enforcement remains very weak in China, and the thousands of public protests there show that many Chinese citizens are becoming increasingly concerned about the deterioration of the environment and also the lack of respect of labour laws. The Chinese Communist Party will have to find a way to bring together economic development and the defence of property and social rights as well as the environment.
Europe has a lot of experience to share in all these areas. When we ask the authorities in Beijing to tackle ecological and social problems, they ask why we Europeans cannot accept that their lower level of development forbids huge investments in these sectors. The Chinese insist that they don't have the wealth of Europe or the US, and point out that we have forced almost 200 years of industrial development on the planet without thinking twice about the environmental and social consequences.
Even if this may be true, it is now clear that the planet will have great difficulty in sustaining a comparable situation in Asia over the coming decades. China knows very well that there will be serious consequences from any further deterioration of its air and water pollution levels. It will also risk becoming politically destabilised if it does not get its social policies right in its very rapidly ageing society.
China and Europe have common interests that are crucial to the development of both. In the first place, there is China’s stability in international affairs. Good relations between China and both the EU and the US are essential to global security. Chinese diplomacy has done much to resolve most of its border problems, but there are still outstanding issues linked to China’s preoccupation with its own territorial integrity. No one, whether it be the EU, Japan or the United States, can question the One China Policy; Taiwan is viewed as part of China, and this is not open to discussion. When I was elected chairman of the China delegation in the European Parliament, this was the first message from Beijing that came across loud and clear.
Regional problems in Tibet or Xinjiang are internal problems that can and will be solved by the Chinese themselves. Their first reaction to outsiders’ criticism of their minority policies is to try and increase the flow of information, on the grounds that the situation must have been misunderstood because of a lack of knowledge. The Chinese premise in these cases is that problems and differences of view can be debated, but the parameters of the debate are not to be touched. This leaves little room for discussion and many people in Europe have difficulty in accepting this.
It will take all the EU’s diplomatic skills to keep pointing at situations where we want China to improve. In the coming years the European Union has to keep stressing that it has been able to solve comparable problems of territory, ethnicity and development through an original blend of economic and political collaboration. The EU, with all its imperfections, is an example of problem solving between nations and regions that is unique in the world. We have to show this time and again to our Chinese colleagues because experience shows that they are interested.