Union treads fine line over China policy

Date: 18/07/1996

By Elizabeth Wise

IF the EU needs more lessons in how difficult it is to conduct a foreign policy which coherently blends an uncompromising human rights policy with an advantageous economic policy, China can always provide them.

MEPs will doubtless be reminded of that when the European Parliament's China delegation meets next Tuesday (23 July).

With the meeting set against the backdrop of Beijing's new raft of death sentences for drug abusers and EU-China tension over copyright piracy, MEPs' first challenge will be to launch a deeper debate with their Chinese counterparts than the muffled discussions EU foreign ministers held earlier this week.

When ministers met on Monday (15 July), Sweden's Lena Hjelm-Wallen raised the subject of the 200 Chinese citizens who have been summarily judged and executed in recent weeks, but her colleagues said it would be “inappropriate” to take any action now.

Germany, for one, is reluctant to criticise China too loudly, given its current preoccupation with putting Bonn-Beijing relations back on track after the minor derailment caused by the Bundestag's adoption of a resolution condemning China's human rights record in Tibet last month.

London also wants to keep things on an even keel as its June 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China approaches. And France, having agreed that the best way to win commercial advantages in China was not to mention human rights during Premier Li Peng's visit to Paris last April, is unlikely to make waves either.

While diplomats said Hjelm-Wallen was not the only minister upset by the Chinese death penalties and other human rights abuses, they acknowledged that EU policy towards Beijing could not be based on social ideals alone.

“The question is now that the US is working on a rapprochement with Beijing, what position should the Union take? We cannot be seen to be more militant than the Americans on human rights,” said one diplomat.

That rankles a bit in some quarters, especially in the new EU member states, which feel the promise of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) means ministers should be able to probe such issues and keep up some level of pressure.

“China may be close to a superpower, but there is no reason why Europe should lower its standards or its voice just because we have a touchy interlocutor,” said one official.

After the Bundestag's Tibet resolution hit the headlines, Beijing cancelled Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel's scheduled June visit. The ensuing debate in Germany led Finance Minister Gunter Rexrodt to cancel his own plans to talk business there.

Bonn ministers have agreed to try to contain the damage, and their EU counterparts seem to agree. Diplomats say “it would be overstating to generalise the German-Chinese thing” and that the only spillover into Union affairs has been in discussion.

“There is no dramatic downturn in EU-China relations,” said a diplomat, adding that government statements about human rights were directed more at domestic audiences in Europe than at Beijing.

“Things can build up, but we are not there yet with China,” he said.

The European Parliament, less constrained by the need for commercial ties, hesitates less in making human rights an issue.

German Christian Democrat MEP Hans-Pieter Liese says his country, for one, should take advantage of the gap in relations to “develop, with the European Union, a more consequential human rights policy”.

But that is unlikely to happen as long as the Commission is working on opening Chinese markets to European investment.

Even the Commission is being extra-cautious. Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann, who accompanied a group of European industrialists to Taiwan in June, cancelled a trip he had planned to make to Beijing after Chinese officials made their displeasure about the Taiwan trip known.

Bangemann's office feared the Commissioner would receive an unfriendly welcome and did not want to risk confrontation.

The Commission maintains a one-China policy, recognising only Beijing and not Taipei. But it is now embarking on the very tricky task of establishing cooperation with a Hong Kong which will no longer be independent of China. Commission strategy aimed at validating Hong Kong as a separate entity will probably need some sweetener before Beijing can swallow it.

Europe's private sector wants the Commission to push other bitter pills down Beijing's throat. The International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), for one, wants better access to markets and a “renewed offensive against debilitating levels of piracy” in China, where 40&percent; of the world's pirated compact discs are sold. The recording industry, which says it lost some 140 million ecu in China last year, is calling on the Commission to strike a copyright agreement similar to the one Washington already has. The Union has so far tackled the problem by giving China equipment and offering customs cooperation, and by helping train police to track down counterfeiters.

That is the kind of pressure Li Peng prefers.

“The Europeans have more favourable terms, more lenient terms. They do not attach political strings to cooperation with China, unlike the Americans,” said the Chinese premier in a recent interview, adding: “If the Europeans adopt more cooperation with China - not just in economic areas, but also in political and other areas - then I believe they will get more orders from China.”

With Peng's message in one ear, and the growing demands from trade unions for social justice, a clamour from industry for market access and calls from Hong Kong for special ties with Europe in the other, Commission officials will have to walk a fragile line.