Trump’s wrecking ball pushes US allies closer to China | China

If geopolitics is at least partly based on friendship between global leaders, China has made an unlikely play for Ireland’s sake when the taoiseach visits Beijing this month. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who met with Ireland’s leader Micheál Martin at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, said that his favorite book in his youth was Irish author Ethel Voynich’s novel The Gadfly, which tells about the revolutionary enthusiasm of Italy in the 1840s.

“It was unusual for us to finally discuss Gadfly and its impact on both of us, but here you are,” Martin said. said Journalists in Beijing.

China is on a charm offensive against Western leaders; This path opens with Donald Trump’s increasingly volatile and destabilizing power grab on the global stage. Although Europe breathed a sigh of relief this week when Trump withdrew his threat to use military force in Greenland and said he would not impose tariffs on those who oppose his plans in the Arctic, the United States no longer looks like a reliable partner.

An editorial in a Chinese newspaper Global Times He clarified Beijing’s pitch: A state media article titled “Europe should seriously consider building a China-EU community with a shared future” said the world risks “reverting to the law of the jungle” and that China and the EU should cooperate on building “a shared future for humanity.”

No country can afford to cut ties or become truly hostile to the world’s largest economy. But in the search for stability, U.S. allies are turning to the country that many in Washington see as an existential threat: China.

“European leaders are trying to keep channels open with Beijing as US policy again looks unpredictable, highlighted by tensions over Greenland and tariff threats,” says Eva Seiwert, senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. “The risk is that, at a time when Europe has a stated goal of de-risking, this approach perpetuates and even deepens existing dependencies on China.”

Mark Carney, elected as Canada’s prime minister on a promise to stand up to U.S. bullying, set the tone for western countries’ readjustment toward China when he traveled to Beijing last week. “Canada is establishing a new strategic partnership with China,” Carney said. He said the global order was “at a breaking point, not a transition point.”

Officially, China is approaching this rebalancing with caution. another one article Reports published in state media this week clearly reflected the idea that China welcomes the current chaos.

Song Bo, who works at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, says Chinese policymakers are reluctant to publicly acknowledge that the global order has fundamentally changed.

Referring to China’s rapid economic growth that came with globalization in the 1990s and 2000s, Song says, “We have always believed that we are the biggest beneficiaries of the international order established after the Cold War.” “It is difficult for us to accept that the current order has undergone a major transformation.”

Another perspective on the subject comes from Ryan Haas, a senior fellow at Brookings. In a post about

Because although China has pledged its commitment to the international rules-based order, Xi has long spoken of the world undergoing “major changes unseen in a century,” echoing Carney’s sense of global “disconnection.” “Beijing may use Carney’s language rhetorically to propose a common diagnosis of U.S.-centered instability, even if there is no convergence on values, interests, or outcomes,” says Seiwert.

Carney’s talk of China stems in part from his adversarial relationship with Trump. In his rambling speech to Davos, Trump scolded Carney for not being “grateful” to the United States. “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark,” Trump said angrily.

Rather than bowing to his southern neighbor, Carney is trying to reduce his country’s dependence on the United States. Beijing agreed to reduce tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100% to 6.1%; thus deviating from alignment with Washington, which led to one of China’s major exports being blocked in the North American market.

Chinese EVs are now on track to account for nearly a fifth of Canada’s EV sales, if not more. Although the deal represents only a small share of China’s EV exports, it is a major political win for China. Concerns about economic dependence on China and even Chinese interference in Canadian elections appear to be off the table.

British prime minister Keir Starmer will arrive in China next week with slightly different conditions. He has a warmer relationship with Trump, although his rhetoric has become harsher in recent days due to the debates over Greenland and the Chagos Islands. And he is under pressure at home to show he is tough on China when it comes to security and human rights, two issues that fueled the controversial Chinese mega-embassy application in London that the government approved this week in the face of intense opposition.

“Starmer may not prove to be an effective prime minister or knowledgeable about China, but he is no fool,” says Steve Tsang, director of the Soas China Institute. “He will want to improve relations with China to improve the UK’s economy and trade, but will not view China as a more reliable partner for the UK than the US.”

Still, like Carney, Starmer hopes to seal deals and make much-needed investments in the UK economy. He will be accompanied by representatives of leading British companies and is expected to revive the UK-China CEO council, despite growing concerns about the national security risks of Chinese investments.

The transition to Beijing is far from simple. Song notes that the European Commission leadership remains hostile to China, and that Chinese officials and business leaders are having difficulty coping with the supposedly warmer relations between China and European countries.

According to Song, the bloc’s general coldness and the war in Ukraine are the biggest obstacles to deepening relations. “Until these two issues are resolved, there will be no significant improvement in China-Europe relations,” says Song.

Ukraine may be particularly high on the agenda of Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, who will go to Beijing on Sunday. “China’s support for Russia has certainly strained relations with the Scandinavian countries, and Finland is no exception,” says Patrik Andersson, an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Relations. However, Andersson notes that Finland’s relations with China are generally more stable than those of Sweden and Norway, and this visit will likely strengthen those ties.

In the months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European countries grappled with the reality that many were dependent on Russia for essential products such as fossil fuels. Calls have been made to prevent China, the world’s most important clean energy technology supplier, from falling into a similar situation. Even in 2020, Simon Gass, chairman of the UK’s joint intelligence committee, in question: “China represents a fairly large-scale risk.”

Such concerns may be fading in the rearview mirror as middle powers try to cling to the world of multilateralism in the face of the wrecking ball being swung by the country that was once its greatest advocate. China insists Trump’s behavior is nothing to celebrate. But the result could still strengthen Beijing’s position on the world stage.

Additional research by Lillian Yang