Adriel Kasonta
In a pretty surprising move, on September 16, the European Parliament published a resolution on a new EU-China strategy. This 18-page document, which mentions “China” more tha 160 times, was released immediately after US President Joe Biden, along with his faithful Anglo-Saxon brethren from Australia (Prime Minister Scott Morrison) and Britain (Prime Minister Boris Johnson), struck a new Cold War-like deal, commonly known as “AUKUS.” Why surprising?

What both developments have in common is that they aim to boost Western powers’ presence in the Indo-Pacific region in an effort to counter China’s rise.

Either someone was really quick and prepared the EU resolution overnight (which is impossible), or it was already waiting in the queue to be spectacularly, with theatrical dramaturgy, announced once the main perpetrators of the anti-China foray finished their leadership bit so that Europe could go ahead and follow.

“We must survive on our own, as others do,” the EU’s foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell said during the announcement of the bloc’s grand strategy for the Indo-Pacific region, recalling French President Emmanuel Macron’s “strategic autonomy” mantra.

Borrell also referred to the Naval Group’s loss of a US$40 billion contract canceled by Prime Minister Morrison favoring nuclear-powered submarines built with US know-how. “I understand the extent to which the French government must be disappointed,” the diplomat concluded.
The EU’s chairman, Charles Michel, further asserted that AUKUS “demonstrates the need for a common EU approach in a region of strategic interest.”

So what exactly is the EU’s “strategic interest” in the Indo-Pacific region, and what “common approach” does it want to embrace to achieve it?
“China is asserting a stronger global role both as an economic power and as foreign-policy actor, which poses serious political, economic, security and technological challenges to the EU, which in turn has significant and long-lasting consequences for the world order, and poses serious threats to rules-based multilateralism and core democratic values,” we can read under Point B of the resolution. The Point C of the document expresses regret over China’s one-party system and the Communist Party of China’s commitment to Marxism-Leninism, which, allegedly, precludes it from embracing “democratic values such as individual freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” as it takes place in more civilized parts of the world like Europe and the US.

The core part of the resolution relates to the recommendation provided to the vice-president of the commission / high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (VP/HR) and the Council on the importance of developing “a more assertive, comprehensive and consistent EU-China strategy that unites all Member States and shapes relations with China in the interest of the EU as a whole,” which can be found under Article 1 (a).

Among several complaints and outrageous demands, we can see the ongoing pattern of applying what Antony Anghie, a professor at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and secretary general of the Asian Society of International Law, calls the “dynamic of difference.”
In this case, we are dealing with the “difference” between civilized democratic European values and non-European communist authoritarian values, with human rights being portrayed as the crux of the matter.

While human rights are the most precious reward being obtained by the formally colonized world during the ongoing struggle with the Western colonial powers, in this document, according to Oxford University political theorist Jeanne Morefield’s article “When neoliberalism hijacked human rights” published in Jacobin magazine on May 1, 2020, they serve as “a weapon to be used against anti-colonial projects” like, for example, the Belt and Road Initiative.

It is worth mentioning that Brussels perceives the BRI as a “threat stemming from China,” among other initiatives like the “dual circulation strategy, 14th Five Year Plan, and Made in China 2025, China Standards 2035 and 16+1 policies, including its military modernization and capacity buildup” – as we can read under Article 22 of the resolution.

“We want to create links and not dependencies,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen while promoting the “Global Gateway” project aimed at competing with the BRI. “We want to create links and not dependencies,” she continued with a jab aimed at Beijing.
“We are good at financing roads. But it does not make sense for Europe to build a perfect road between a Chinese-owned copper mine and a Chinese-owned harbor. We have to get smarter when it comes to these kinds of investments,” von der Leyen concluded, adding that priority would be given to connectivity endeavors expected to be discussed at a regional summit next February.

Her comments fit the narrative of an ongoing smear campaign accusing China of practicing “debt-trap diplomacy,” which for those familiar with the subject is nothing more than a “meme” invented by Indian propaganda in 2017, as Deborah Bräutigam, the Bernard L Schwartz Professor in International Political Economy and director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), argues in an article published in the journal Area Development and Policy on December 9, 2019.

The writer is London-based foreign affairs analyst and commentator, and founder of AK Consultancy. He is former chairman of the International Affairs Committee at the oldest conservative think tank in the UK, Bow Group. You can follow him on Twitter @Adriel_Kasonta