Posts Tagged ‘China-EU’

How China’s coronavirus medical diplomacy is failing to win over the world

Posted: April 9, 2020 in South China Morning Post
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And now finally up to date with my latest piece for the South China Morning Post, this time looking at some of the geopolitical questions flowing around China, broader geopolitics and the COVID-19 mess. Covers ground not dissimilar to my earlier piece for the Telegraph though focused in a different direction. Has already received some anger online and was reproduced in a Singaporean local Today. In other media work, earlier piece for ORF on Kashmir and the UK and my last RSIS piece on the Maldives were both picked up and reproduced by Eurasia Review, while spoke to the Independent about recent UK terrorism numbers release and last interview in CTC Sentinel with Lord Evans was written up by the paper.

How China’s coronavirus medical diplomacy is failing to win over the world

Forget Pax Sinica, China’s medical outreach is struggling to attract new friends. And even though Russia and Iran, its closest allies, may be on the same page, underlying tensions remain. There is a global leadership gap but Beijing is not filling it

Raffaello Pantucci

Screen Shot 2020-04-09 at 02.32.01

The world is grasping for an understanding of how the geopolitics of the coronavirus will play out. One dominant theme is that China is mendaciously riding the media waves to paint itself as a saviour dispensing medical equipment.

Yet, it is hard to see how Beijing is benefiting from its medical diplomacy, with opprobrium from every direction. Even given China’s close alliances with Iran and Russia, it is possible to see tensions emerging.

It is not at all clear that China will come out of the virus crisis as the rhetoric winner, notwithstanding the frantic narrative seeking to paint it that way.

Given the energy that China appears to be putting into promoting and pushing its medical diplomacy, it is surprisingly hard to uncover much evidence of a positive reception. While news stories speak of Chinese doctors and equipment arriving in stricken European states, it is difficult to find many news stories trumpeting China’s magnanimity.

Those who do speak of it positively tend to be the ones who already hold a positive view of China. The bigger narrative that seems to have caught on of late, however, is that much of the Chinese equipment appears to be faulty. It certainly does not seem that China is winning many new friends with its medical diplomacy.

Where China is finding resonance is in the predictable places, but even this is with caveats. The almost comical conspiracy theory that Covid-19 was a US military weapon has, unsurprisingly, found resonance in both Tehran and Moscow.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei referred to the theory on his Twitter feed, while Russia’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, defended China’s work on the virus and helped to propagate narratives espoused by Beijing.

Yet, singing from the same hymn sheet about the virus has not swept away the underlying tensions. For example, Sinochem is refusing to buy oil from Russia’s Rosneft after the US warned of sanctions if it did so.

At the same time, Chinese purchasers have bought record volumes of Russian oil from other suppliers, taking advantage of record low prices to fill strategic reserves.

Iran may still be supplying energy to China, but some calculations have concluded that Tehran is doing this for zero income, given that it is paying off earlier Chinese investments. This is hardly magnanimous action on Beijing’s part to strategic allies in difficult positions.

The coronavirus has caused tensions between the three nations. Russia was one of the first countries to close its borders to China (doing so at the same time as Italy and before the United States), while reports from Iran suggest that its outbreak, which started in Qom, may have come either from businessmen travelling back from China or Chinese workers.

In Russia, there have been reports of East Asians being attacked, while Moscow bus drivers were told to report it to the police if they found a Chinese person on board.

We are seeing a classic dance play out here, with all three powers playing the same game of rhetoric (deriding Europe and attacking America), while the realist dynamics churn on relentlessly below the surface.

There is little evidence that the coronavirus has changed the dynamics between the three, nor that it has bolstered China and its axis of convenience on the world stage.

Some fear that in some ways Beijing’s displays of medical diplomacy will permanently reshape the international order. Yet, the reality is that the most damaging impact to the international order comes from the absence of leadership in Washington.

Some European capitals have been slow to respond to the pandemic and walked when they should have run, but the truth is that few expected the European Union to lead the world in responding to this crisis. The EU remains confounded by its fundamental governance contradictions.

But none of this means that China can credibly fill the vacuum. Rather, a vacuum continues to exist, and is only being made larger by the fumbling response from US President Donald Trump and his administration. This is the acceleration that is happening in international geopolitics. Power is ebbing away while others desperately thrash around for influence.

Yet no one is able to fill it, creating a confusing order where rules and behaviour are increasingly incomprehensible, where state leaders and their spokespeople lie, and we refuse to acknowledge goodwill and impressive gestures for what they are. The cynicism is obvious, but the absence of something better means such narratives are gaining greater attention.

China has undoubtedly used its medical aid politically, but ultimately this is not going to shape the new world order. We may not be seeing an end to an American-led order in favour of Pax Sinica, but we are witnessing a rebalancing of the two.

Raffaello Pantucci is senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London

Why the EU doesn’t get China’s Belt and Road

Posted: May 22, 2017 in EU Observer
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A new piece on a similar theme as the last one, about the Belt and Road after the Summit in Beijing, and specifically, Europe’s views and experiences of it for an old outlet haven’t contributed to for a while, the EU Observer. Also spoke to Newsweek about the ISIS aspect of the Trump leak about aviation threats to the Russians, and did a longer conversation with RFE/RL’s Majlis podcast as part of a panel discussion with Bruce Pannier of RFE/RL; Przemtslow Ozierski, the deputy director of the Central Asia Strategic Center for Analysis, Dialogue and Development; and, Nicolas de Pedro (@nicolasdepedro), a research fellow in charge of the post-Soviet space at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.

Why the EU doesn’t get China’s Belt and Road

By 

LONDON, 19. MAY, 11:56

Chinese leader Xi Jinping trumpeted his foreign policy vision – the Belt and Road – to great fanfare this past week.

Yet a consistently discordant note was heard from European reporting around the event, with officials talking to press about their lack of understanding of the project. While some of their concerns were understandable, there was an element of missing the point.

  • The symbolic first arrival of a Chinese train in Germany (Photo: DB Schenker)

Xi Jinping may talk in terms of a project, but in reality what we are seeing laid out is a grand vision: one that Beijing is using to re-shape its engagement with the world.

For Europe, it is important to figure out exactly what this means. Otherwise, it could both miss out on an opportunity, and create a series of potential problems with a relationship that will continue to be important going forwards.

First, it is important to dispel what the Belt and Road is not. It is not a giant aid project. Nor has China particularly ever pretended that it was.

Leadership will get caught up in grandiloquent language about how the project is a great gift to humanity. However, in reality, it is a vision of re-connecting the world in a manner that will support Chinese trade flows and help Chinese companies go out into the world.

At its core, it is about helping to develop China’s underdeveloped regions – parts of the country that are deeply disconnected from its bustling ports.

Second, it is important to understand what is actually happening. Not all of the strands of the Belt and Road are new, nor are they all the same.

What has been happening in Central Asia for almost two decades, re-branded as Belt and Road, is not the same or as important domestically to China as newly advanced projects in parts of Africa or Eastern Europe.

At the same time, some corridors seem to be advancing far more slowly: the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM) is one that has been talked about since the late 1990s, but has only now actually moved into clear action across its entire route.

The point is, while the Belt and Road is discussed by Beijing in the same light, the reality on the ground is very different in each and every case.

Third, it is a vision with a long timeline. China is thinking to a very long horizon. In typical fashion for a centrally planned economy, it is considering things into the future and not the short- to medium-term eye-line with which most Western governments operate.

So, when the country looks to build train links across the continent that make little economic sense now, it could be that the lens we are looking at them through is too short.

Once China is able to develop its western regions and create industrial and manufacturing bases out there, it might suddenly become more economically sensible to put goods on trains across the continent.

Fourth, not everything is expected to work – this is a leadership vision and not a project.

The Belt and Road was first christened by Xi during a set of speeches in Astana and Jakarta. Laid out then, they were outlined as a pair of concepts that would slowly catch on and become the defining foreign policy concept that Xi Jinping would offer the world.

Conceptual Nature

The illogical nature of a Belt being over land, while a Road went to sea highlighted the conceptual nature of what was being laid out. In fact, the seeds of the concept could already be found in previous administrations – Jiang Zemin had his “Develop the West” concept, and Hu Jintao’s administration was the one that started up the idea of refocusing on Xinjiang and developing its relations with its neighbours.

Both of these served as ideological godfathers to the Belt and Road, which in essence took this model and internationalised it.

But the point is that none of these were specific projects. They were rather broad policy directives that were launched out of Beijing which were then followed up and pushed out by the many institutions in China, to varying degrees of success.

The BCIM was born under Jiang Zemin and went nowhere, and while the Hu Jintao initiative with Xinjiang and Central Asia was more successful, there are a few projects along the route that have failed to deliver as they were intended.

None of this is that surprising, as, ultimately, the leadership’s announcements should be assessed as a central policy direction rather than detailed plans.

Initially, when the speeches were delivered, there was no specific policy planning behind them.

Now that the concepts have firmly caught on, almost everything has become Belt and Road – in part this is because the concept is so broad (so everything fits under it), but also it is a way for everything to try to connect with the bright vision laid out by the leadership.

This includes ideas and projects that have a very limited connection to the actual Belt and Road – there is an almost inexhaustible list of Chinese regions that have defined themselves as the crucial points on the Belt and Road.

Within this, not everything is going to work (because it never does). But this is not a concern, as ultimately what has been offered is a concept rather than a project, meaning that it will not ultimately fail, as no specific parameter for success has been laid out.

EU Engagement

All of this is essential for European policymakers and thinkers to understand.

If they are to properly engage with the vision, they need to first understand it in granular detail – something that is eminently doable through the numerous reports that have been published, or by undertaking research themselves.

They then need to appreciate what the vision actually is and the timelines to which it is operating, and then finally focus on which aspects do correspond with their specific interests.

China’s biggest problem with this vision is that it requires considerable support, consent and contributions from the countries along and at the end of the routes, and those that are more likely to succeed are those with supportive partners.

Consequently, Europe can choose which aspects it wants to engage with and simply ignore the others. This will not necessarily stop them from happening, but they are not realities Europe has to engage with if it does not want to.

The key in all of this is for Europe to decide exactly what its strategy towards China is going to be, and what it is that it wants to do to engage with this century’s rising power. In the Belt and Road they are facing Xi Jinping’s foreign policy legacy.

Given that the conceptual outline is focused on the Eurasian continent, Europe has an opportunity to re-craft its relations with China in a way that connects with the leadership and potentially has a game-changing impact across the continent the two powers share.

It is not enough for European officials to simply tell the press they do not understand the Belt and Road – the vision is clear enough, but the point is to decide how to engage with it.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute,a think tank in London

Building support for the Belt and Road

Posted: March 15, 2016 in Whose World Order?
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And final catch up post, this time for a think tank I worked for a while ago, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), with whom I am still doing some things. This is a post for their site which focused on some of the issues of the ‘Belt and Road’ strategy and what they need to do to get greater European cooperation on it. This is a topic that is very rich and has lots of work in the pipeline around it.

This aside, to catch up on some media conversations, spoke to The Times, Reuters and La Liberation about the leak of ISIS documents, to Newsweek about al Shabaab targeting aviation and training Boko Haram fighters, to Buzzfeed about Brexit and national security questions, to The Independent about Prevent issues in the UK, to the Press Agency about the attacks in Ivory Coast, to the Associated Press about the latest round of talks in Afghanistan the Chinese are helping with, and a presentation I did recently in Washington on China-Russia in Central Asia got a write up in the Diplomat.

Building Support for the Belt and Road

Xi Jinping has laid out what is going to be the defining foreign policy vision of his leadership in the form of the Belt and Road. An all-encompassing initiative, it is something that repeated Chinese leaders have said they want to engage with foreign partners on, in particular with European capitals given the vision is one that starts in China and ends in Europe. Yet, there is still a lack of clarity around exactly what this initiative actually looks like and how it is that foreigners can engage with China on this project. Beijing needs to lay out more clearly what it needs and wants from the world to implement this vision.

Seen from the outside, the Belt and Road initiative is one that appears to in essence be about building economic and trade corridors emanating out from China. Through the development of transport links – be they rail, road, ports or airports – and the construction and rehabilitation of pipelines, markets, economic zones and more, China aims to open Eurasia while reconnecting China to Europe across the wide landmass they share. The potential impact is a game-changing effect on a wide swathe of Eurasia, something that has not gone unnoticed in Europe where policymakers spend lots of time thinking about how to develop their continent. Yet, connecting on the initiative has so far proven difficult. If China genuinely wants greater cooperation on this strategy, then a number of key things need to happen.

First, Beijing needs to clarify where the routes of the Belt and Road will actually go. At the moment, all of the maps that have been produced are ones that are done by enterprising journalists interpreting official statements. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the body responsible for the vision, has so far not expressed a view or produced a map. This is problematic as it means people are unable to know exactly which Beijing’s priorities are and what specific routes Europe should focus on developing to support and work with China’s plan. For example, generally it is clear that the Silk Road Economic Belt will pass through Central Asia, but which specific road or rail projects is China going to focus on first?

Second, China needs to understand that if they want to maximise external support on the vision, then Chinese led funding initiatives need to be open to foreign contractors. European investment structures like the EBRD or EIB (as well as international ones like the ADB) are very keen to work with China on this vision, but need to ensure that the subsequent project contracts to emerge from investments are put out to open tender. This ensures that the best possible contractors will undertake the projects and ensures that the vision gets carried through in the most effective way possible. This is something that extends beyond simple financing terms and contract procedures: it needs to be made clearer that there is a role for others in Chinese led projects. The key point here is that China needs to be open to working with others in very practical terms to try to advance this vision.

Third, China needs to find ways to discuss sensitive security questions with outsiders. Through the Belt and Road, China is going to increasingly find itself becoming one of the most consequential players on the ground in large parts of Eurasia. With such power will increasingly come a greater regional role, including on sensitive security questions where Beijing will find itself having to try to broker negotiations and agreements between sides in open conflict with each other. This is already happening in Afghanistan, and as time goes on Beijing will find itself ever more involved in such discussions across the continent. Europeans have some experience and understanding of some of these questions and would be willing to share their intelligence and experience with China if Beijing showed an equal level of openness in discussions. Genuine cooperation and deeper understanding come from a full and frank exchange.

There are clearly a great deal more detailed issues that need to be discussed, but these three overarching points need to be addressed before greater detail can be gone in to. China needs to understand that many in Europe are keen to cooperate on this vision, but they need some greater clarity to able to find practical ideas for what cooperation can look like in practice. By offering a more detailed outline of what this initiative physically looks like and what projects Beijing is prioritising, opening up to the idea of making joint investments, and being willing to participate in more frank and open security discussions, Beijing will find receptive doors across Europe. All of which will be essential to ensure President Xi’s vision turns into a long-standing foreign policy legacy reconnecting the Eurasian landmass along the old Silk Roads.

Raffaello Pantucci is Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)

Enter the Dragon to save the Euro

Posted: July 10, 2011 in Oriental Morning Post
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Not the actual title of my latest article for Oriental Morning Post (东方早报), but instead the title of an article in the Telegraph that quoted my recent ISN piece. Wen’s trip to Europe also elicited an interview with Reuters, which they used a small quote from that was picked up in a variety of places. In any case, here is the link to the Dongfang Zaobao piece (in Chinese), and below is the text I drafted in English.

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Premier Wen Jiabao returns from his latest European trip with a raft of new deals and contracts with old European friends. In contracts geared to bring benefits to both sides, Premier Wen’s trip led to the signing of deals worth $15 billion in Germany (part of which was a purchase of some 88 Airbus planes), $4 billion in the UK and $1.8 billion in Hungary. He also announced the establishment of $2.8 billion fund to support cooperation between Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SME) in China and Germany and a special loan of $1.4 billion to support similar relations between Chinese and Hungarian firms. But while these deals show the strength of the Sino-European relationship, the fact that they are the big issues to come away from Premier Wen’s trip to Europe shows the relatively immaturity of the EU-China relationship. This is not a “strategic partnership” with any depth.

The blame for this is two-fold. On the one hand, Europe has not managed to clarify its decision-making processes yet. The selection of Herman van Rompuy as President of the EU and Catherine Ashton as Foreign Minister was a conscious choice by the member states of the European Union to maintain authority over Brussels, the traditional seat of power in the EU. Neither are known as being aggressive leaders, and the member states have continued to use Brussels when it is useful and ignore it when it is not. The result has been to confuse matters with outside partners uncertain of whether they should focus their efforts on the member states or Brussels when they are looking for a partner to talk to in Europe.

But at the same time, China remains a hesitant actor on the world stage. Unless dealing with obvious trade or economic questions or issues that are seen as “core interests,” China is not a very certain actor in international relations. The traditional policy is one of “non-interference”: but as a Chinese colleague put it to me the other day this can also mean, “not doing anything.” The end result is that as China’s interests in the world are expanding, its capacity and ambition to do anything have not matched this growth. This has led to trips like this latest one to Europe, where big trade deals have been signed while there has been little serious discussion about anything else.

This is unfortunate, as both China and Europe share interests in the world beyond trade. To look at Libya, both suffered greatly as a result of Colonel Gadaffi’s slow strangling of his nation and the subsequent chaos that it caused. China lost unknown billions in investment and had to suddenly evacuate tens of thousands of citizens. Europe had to evacuate less people, but nevertheless lost a major energy supplier and an equally substantial investment. While now there is some divergence on how to address the problems that the chaos in Libya has thrown up, there is clearly a joint interest in making things better and in establishing ways that such situations can be avoided in the future.

And beyond Africa, both China and Europe clearly have a keen interest in making sure that things in Afghanistan and Pakistan calm down considerably from their current tense tempo. While clearly it is the US that is the lead actor in AfPak at the moment, both China and Europe have active interests in ensuring stability prevails and some discussion of what they want to do there in the longer term might be a good idea. And it is not only geopolitical questions that are important: climate change remains an crucial issue to both, but aside from discussions of developing green technologies, there was surprisingly little conversation between China and her European interlocutors on this topic this time around.

All of this is a missed opportunity, as clearly China is coming to a period of reconsidering its position in the world, while Europe is figuring out how to do more with fewer assets. A moment that would lend itself to more comprehensive consultations between Chinese and European leaders than the trade and economics show that just took place.

The point is simple: trade between nations will always take place. In a globalized world, men will always sell things to each other across borders. If we want to make this into a truly “strategic partnership” however, then we need to deepen the seriousness of our discussions beyond this realm. In this way, the EU-China relationship can live up to its long-missed potential.