C 152/58
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
6.4.2022
3.3.
In 2011 the US turned away from a destabilised Middle East, disillusioned.
The resulting vacuum was filled initially by the Islamic State movement.
When the latter was largely wiped out in Iraq and Syria, it was Russia in particular that filled the gap.
During the same critical year, the then US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton declared that the political future would be determined in Asia, not in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Europe and the Middle East had become peripheral to US interests and American strategy.
In the light of Afghanistan, this policy, which is dangerous for Europe’s stability and security, seems set to continue under President Biden.
3.4.
Europe is still not the focus of US foreign policy.
The USA is directing its full attention and resources to the unchecked rise of China, which has possibly been accelerated by the pandemic.
Added to this, the situation in Latin America has become difficult once again, with authoritarian and corrupt regimes, not to mention failed states.
Latin America is closer to the USA than Europe or, say, Africa because of the population displacements taking place there.
Africa, with the world’s fastest growing population, hardly receives any American attention at all.
Neighbouring Europe, on the other hand, does show an interest in Africa but it lacks a strategy, unlike China which is very active in the region.
3.5.
China’s rapid economic expansion unleashed in the late 1980s by Deng Xiaoping has continued, and since Xi Jinping took office, the country has increasingly boldly asserted its claim to be a new global power.
From a developing country ruled by a dictatorship with a peaceful foreign policy, China has turned into a surveillance state with an overbearing, at worst aggressive, military stance in Asia and a (once again) pervasive totalitarian presence at home.
The EU does not have a visible strategy for dealing with China, and during the German Presidency forced through a politically fuelled bilateral investment agreement that requires too little from China, including on the implementation of fundamental rights such as freedom of association, and that at best serves European interests only superficially.
The EESC is very concerned about possible consequences, particularly as regards disinformation and influence, as the agreement also opens up the news, media and entertainment sectors to Chinese investment.
3.5.1.
China is massively increasing its military capacity.
The country has now become an openly bellicose new world power, threatening ever more starkly a possible invasion of Taiwan, seeking control of key global maritime trade routes, violating all the commitments it itself entered into to protect democracy and freedom in Hong Kong, and repressing Muslim populations in its north-western regions with extraordinary brutality.
The latter does not prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from immediately offering good relations to the Taliban at the moment of the Afghan collapse, since the Western failure in the Hindu Kush serves to empower the CCP in its preference for a multilateral, but unfree, international order.
The concept of multilateralism, which has hitherto been viewed favourably, is thus being re-evaluated.
3.5.2.
Chinese influence in Europe has become a factor that cannot be ignored economically or politically.
Beijing is patiently pursuing its Silk Road project, occupying strategic positions step by step, making countries in Africa and Asia politically dependent on it by offering large loans that are only outwardly bounteous, but that in reality leave them shackled.
Beijing has also already achieved control over key infrastructure in south-eastern Europe.
Examples in the EU are the port of Piraeus in Greece, the construction of motorways in Montenegro and the roll-out of 5G.
3.5.3.
Parts of the European economy, including German companies in particular, have now become dangerously dependent on the Chinese market, which initially made itself available to European industry in the role of subcontractor but without really opening up.
Some companies are rightly reconsidering their supply chains, which are far too one-sided and ultimately dependent on the potentially arbitrary behaviour of Chinese leaders.
3.5.4.
Even since China joined the WTO, Chinese markets have been difficult to access or closed.
There is certainly no question of fairness or reciprocity.
The country is distorting global competition with its subsidies and stubbornly refuses to reduce overcapacity.
The CCP-dominated state has always systematically conducted industrial espionage and exacted knowledge transfer through joint ventures.
The country now only allows access to those foreign investors whose know-how it needs itself, continuing to protect its businesses from any risk in a way that distorts competition.
All this is incompatible with a mutually accessible and fair market system.
3.6.
Since Vladimir Putin’s memorable speech in 2007 at the Munich Security Conference, Russia has regrettably departed more and more radically from its cooperation with the West.
Moscow began using its neighbours’ dependence on natural gas supplies as a means of exerting pressure early on.
Where that was no longer enough and the former Soviet Republics were becoming too close to the EU and thus to the West, or sought greater independence, the Russian leadership conducted covert or open warfare on its borders or in the former sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, annexing Crimea in violation of international law and Ukrainian territory in breach of Russia’s own assurances made under international agreements.
The Kremlin took ruthless advantage of the instability that followed the short Arab Spring of 2011.
It also