Clash delays China strategy

Date: 04/06/1998

BY By Mark Turner

EU MINISTERS are expected to endorse European Commission calls for a new strategy towards China later this month, instead of next week as originally planned, because of a bizarre presentational dispute.

The delay follows a clash between national governments and the Commission over the degree to which the five strands or 'pillars' of the Union's China policy from 1995, including social reform and poverty alleviation, should be put at the centre of a new 17-million-ecu cooperation programme.

The Commission resisted giving the pillars too high a profile, arguing that priorities had changed and the EU should focus instead on China's entry to the World Trade Organisation and economic reforms following Asia's financial crisis.

But the UK presidency insisted the China strategy should be presented in simple terms which people could understand, and remain consistent with the 1995 strategy.

The irony was that both sides agreed on the fundamental aim of the text: constructive and coherent engagement with China, crowned by a series of annual summits.

The Commission and the presidency managed to settle the disagreement this week in 20 minutes, said one insider, although not in time for foreign ministers to give it the official seal of approval at their meeting next Monday (8 June).

Commission officials claim the disagreement was based mainly on misunderstandings arising from a long-drawn-out diplomatic exchange, and say the China paper should be adopted without debate by the end of the month.

But critics argue that the dispute, focusing on presentation rather than substance, highlights the fundamental problem with Europe's policy towards Beijing. They say the Union spends more time drafting contorted forms of words to satisfy both European public opinion and China than actually addressing basic issues.

"We want a consistency between what the EU says and the concrete measures it takes to achieve that," said Jean-Paul Marthoz of Human Rights Watch in Brussels.

He added that although presentation was important, and blanket condemnations were not necessarily the right way to improve matters, the Union should be considerably more frank when talking to Beijing. "We are not calling for violent statements, but we do think the EU should make a serious assessment of the situation in China," he insisted.