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“Dialog with China must not be allowed to break off despite everything” – this mantra is currently being repeated non-stop in foreign policy circles, and this is also reflected here in China.Table. But how successful is the EU in keeping channels to Beijing open after the sanctions battle of 2021 and the failed video summit of 2022? US officials and politicians have been more adept at organizing face-to-face offline meetings with their Chinese counterparts in recent months, analyzes Frank Sieren. The Americans keep exchanges going despite harsh words from Washington, while the EU keeps getting in its own way.
However, this is also owed to the EU’s structure. European foreign policy is still bogged down between the member states and Brussels. But the EU must become more active toward China if it wants to live up to its claim to representation, says Sieren. If it doesn’t, it will lose the credibility it has just painstakingly built up.
China strives to become the world leader in technology – this is also something we hear time and again. Today, Ning Wang sheds light on a concrete policy mechanism Beijing applies to work toward this goal. Research policy pools resources into single, exceptional laboratories designed to deliver results quickly. Funding often pursues practical policy goals such as armaments or energy security. But basic research is also gaining momentum. These “key labs” form the focal point for the next catch-up stage.
Finn Mayer-Kuckuk
Feature
The US courts China – while the EU pouts
This visit is indicative of a new constellation in the newly forming world order: On June 13, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with his direct counterpart, Yang Jiechi. Yang is the architect of Chinese foreign policy in the Politburo. Sullivan and Yang met in Luxembourg: in the middle of Europe, within a stone’s throw of Brussels.
Yang, on the other hand, had not scheduled a stop with EU representatives. They did not want to. Meanwhile, a White House spokesman described the Luxembourg talks as “candid, substantive, and productive”. In the process, Sullivan stressed “the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage competition between our two countries”. The White House even raised the prospect of a summit between President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in the coming months.
Meanwhile, cold silence reigns in Brussels toward China. Only Nicolas Chapuis, the departing EU ambassador to Beijing, is now coming out of the woodwork: He told Bloomberg that two high-level meetings will be held in the coming weeks. But while that is still an unclear plan, the US has long since created facts and reactivated its China contacts. Beijing, in turn, is responding to this initiative with increased receptiveness to talks.
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