Europe’s China gloom; Germany’s universities under fire
Hello, and welcome to China Influence Monitor, a weekly newsletter published by CEPA and Coda Story and edited by me, Edward Lucas. We track the westward footprint of China’s influence operations, and their effects on politics, economies, societies and alliances across Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia and Europe.
In this issue: US and China battle for European hearts and minds; secretive German unis in court; Huawei’s news app
America acts — but what do Europeans think?
China will be the Biden administration’s top foreign-policy priority, and Europe will be its most important ally. So European views on China, and towards the US, will be vital.
A big opinion survey by Richard Turcsányi and colleagues at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies show attitudes to China are hardening, and negative in ten out of the 13 countries surveyed: the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Here are the top findings:
- People in western and northern Europe are particularly hawkish.
- Sweden comes top on that front, followed by Germany, France, the UK, and the Czech Republic.
- Only Russian and Serbian respondents trust China more than they trust the EU and the U.S.
But a more gloomy note comes in a new survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations of eleven big European countries. Six out of ten respondents believe that China will be more powerful than the US within a decade and would want their country to stay neutral in a conflict between the two superpowers. Southerners are much cooler towards the US and its chances than the northerners.
Also unsettling are the findings in Globsec Trends on views of China (and Russia) in selected central and eastern European countries. Security worries are declining and moral equivalence is rife.
Only in the Czech Republic does a majority of the population (51%) see China as a threat. But 62% of Poles, the highest percentage in the region, blame China for the pandemic.