BERLIN: Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, begins visiting China on Thursday, aiming to reassert a joint European Union (EU) policy toward China days after remarks by Emmanuel Macron, French President, suggested disarray in the West’s approach to the emerging superpower.
According to Reuters, Macron aroused a backlash in the United States and Europe when he asked the EU to reduce reliamce on the US and cautioned against being vassal in the crisis over
Taiwan driven by an “American rhythm and the Chinese overreaction.”
Several European diplomats, politicians and analysts saw Macron’s comments in the interview with Politico and the French daily Les Echos as the gift to what they called China goal of dismantling transatlantic unity.
Analysts said that as a result, the stakes of the inaugural trip by Foreign Minister of Germany Annalena Baerbock have risen, with many European Union members hoping Berlin will use this opportunity to set out a clear and united European Union line on China.
President Macron was seen taking a weak line on Taiwan by warning that Europe shouldn’t get “caught up in crises that aren’t ours”. Although his office insisted this wasn’t his intended meaning, his position on China and Taiwan had stayed the same.
“Now it was about damage control to a large degree, but the cloud of Macron’s visit is massive, and still it’s unclear how this balance would play out in the end,” Alicja Bachulska, a China-European Union ties researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Warsaw, told Reuters.
Even without President Macron’s remarks, the trip would’ve been delicate for Annalena Baerbock, who has been more hawkish on China than Olaf Scholz, Chancellor and is drafting a China policy to reduce Germany’s economic dependence on Beijing.
“She was perceived as being the troublemaker. I’d be surprised if this doesn’t play a role in her visit,” Tim Ruehlig, China expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, told Reuters.
Baerbock made German position on Taiwan clear during her visit, foreign policy parliamentarian Nils Schmid of Germany told Reuters, adding President Macron’s remarks had destroyed the hoped-for impetus for a standard European China policy.
Foreign minister on the two-day trip
On the two-day trip, Annalena Baerbock, will meet her counterpart Qin Gang and China’s diplomat Wang Yi.
Speaking ahead of her visit, Baerbock said that the focus of her visit would be reminding China of its responsibilities to influence Russia to eliminate its invasion of Ukraine and underlining the common European conviction that the unilateral change in the status of the Taiwan Strait would be unacceptable.
She added that Europe’s view of China as a partner, competitor and systemic rival is the compass of its policy.
Baerbock said, “It is clear to me that we’ve no interest in economic decoupling … but we must take the more systematic look at the high risks of one-sided dependencies and reduce them.”
