EU icepack; Swedish Wolf Warrior win
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.
BULLYING BACKFIRES
China’s influence operations — this newsletter’s subject — are finally in the international spotlight, with the G7 summit lambasting the party-state’s “arbitrary, coercive economic policies and practices”, as well as domestic repression.
Responses vary. But the main trend is that the bullying is backfiring. The European Commission has put the EU’s investment deal with China on ice. Legal drafting continues, but with no effort to muster political support for ratification. Instead, the EU’s executive branch has drafted new rules for screening investment from state-subsidized enterprises and wants greater supply-chain resilience (i.e. less dependence on China). It is also (belatedly) sending vaccines to the covid-hit countries of the Balkans, where Chinese (and Russian) vaccine diplomacy have flourished amid a vacuum of concern from richer European countries.
The obvious sticking point for the investment deal is the sanctions that China unwisely imposed on European politicians and others. But hawks in the European Parliament say dropping these isn’t enough: Chinese repression of Uyghurs and others, and the crackdown in Hong Kong, are the real hurdles. European lawmakers don’t just block things: they set their own foreign policy agenda. Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, a Taipei-based academic, notes how the parliament is pushing Brussels to upgrade ties with Taiwan.