They were probably their last talks in this framework when Angela Merkel and her cabinet met the Chinese ministers and head of government Li virtually on Wednesday. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk explains the background to the consultation and classifies the constructive but, at the same time, openly critical mood. Merkel wants to stick to the CAI investment agreement despite international criticism – and she hopes that her successors will not abandon the tradition of regular meetings between the two governments.
Much promised, little delivered: Marcel Grzanna shows that it was precisely false promises and military exercises with Russia that scratched China’s image in the Baltics, so much so that the country is now seen as a security risk by the Baltic states.
Beijing also made big promises when it joined the WTO in 2001. The twentieth anniversary of accession will soon be celebrated, but the balance sheet drawn up by EU experts is anything but rosy, as Amelie Richter analyses.
Have a good start to the day.
The German-Chinese government consultations on Wednesday were about a broad “spectrum of cooperation”, as Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the start of the online meeting with head of government Li Keqiang. Both sides initially assured each other of their appreciation. But then it quickly became clear that the talks also had gruff passages. “China and Germany have different views on some issues. That is an objective fact,” Li said.
There were conflicts in several fields. “The topic of human rights has traditionally always played a role in our talks,” Merkel said. “There are also differences of opinion on this, especially when we think of the situation in Hong Kong, for example.” Li, however, forbade himself to criticize here. Germany should negotiate “on the basis of equal treatment and non-interference in internal affairs”. Then China could create “favorable conditions for further smooth development of cooperation”. He pointed out that both Germany and China have an interest in open markets and free trade. In this context, Hong Kong, according to the Chinese reading, falls under the “internal affairs” from which Germany should stay away. And even if Merkel at least mentions Hong Kong: She did not offer concrete assistance to the democracy movement there. In the meantime, it has been largely crushed.
The closed round also dealt with the fate of the CAI investment agreement. This is still awaiting confirmation by the European Parliament – and China has just fallen out with it by imposing entry bans on MEPs. But while critics are increasingly doubtful about the viability of the CAI, Merkel continued to speak positively about it. “I think this investment agreement can also be a cornerstone for economic relations, for transparent relations, for mutual market access and reciprocity,” the chancellor said. It would create more legal certainty. China would have to abide by international labor standards in the future, she said. “Reasonable working conditions everywhere and for all people in Germany and in China are of great importance.”
Despite the disagreements, the summit also produced a long series of deals and memoranda of understanding. At intergovernmental consultations, the ministers also meet with their advisers and top officials in smaller rounds to decide on open issues. In the process, they also provide the impetus for further development of cooperation. According to diplomats, the format is generally fruitful: What is put on paper in the presence of high-ranking leaders is considered binding in the Chinese apparatus. The meetings thus provide material for implementation at lower official levels for many months to come. Merkel now hopes that such consultations will also take place under her successors – “You know that these will be my last government consultations.”
Specifically, this time there were, among other things, declarations of intent and discussions on the following points:
The documents from the line ministries were vague at this stage, but it is just a matter of setting a starting point for the work of line officials.
The German Chambers of Commerce in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou came forward on the occasion of the government consultations with their wish list of issues to be improved in relations. It is based on a survey of 320 local companies. “Travel restrictions continue to rank first with 78 percent,” said Clas Neumann, president of the German Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. Planned investments, therefore, remain on hold. German companies are now hoping for the introduction of a “fast-track procedure” that will allow specialists and managers to enter the country more easily. Mechanical engineering companies in particular have problems helping their customers to set up production lines.
Almost half of the companies surveyed want a level playing field with Chinese companies. They fear being disadvantaged by the idea of “dual circulation“. Therefore, German business in China has high expectations of the CAI, from which China’s promise to gradually put EU competitors on an equal footing can be read.
China has been a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for almost 20 years – on the upcoming anniversary in November, the relationship between the People’s Republic and the other WTO member countries is not in its best shape – which is not primarily Beijing’s fault, according to analysts. An overview of the situation:
Hopes were high: Beijing was supposed to adapt to global rules-based trade when it joined the WTO in 2001. The result since then, however, has been sobering, with numerous complaints against China – most recently, the trade war between Washington and the US also showed the WTO dispute settlement mechanism the limits of the organization. The behavior of the People’s Republic angers many sides: China has still not fulfilled its promise to join the WTO’s agreements on public tenders, the German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association VDMA criticized this week. The association called on the German government to work to ensure that China refrains from special requests, among other things, according to a statement.
China is considered a developing country in the WTO and thus receives many exemptions from WTO rules. Beijing does not want to give up this status. However, the “undifferentiated status seems less and less justified for a country that officially maintains a military budget of around $180 billion, wants to invest a trillion dollars globally in infrastructure projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and invests worldwide in technology companies as part of the industrial policy plan ‘Made in China 2025’ or subsidizes key industries in its own country in the triple-digit billion range,” criticized the Federation of German Industries (BDI) at the end of last year.
There is also trouble over China’s bid to join the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). Negotiations for this entered their 14th year in 2021 – and there is no end in sight for the time being. Beijing did submit a new offer in 2019. But it was still “unacceptable”, according to a US government report on foreign trade barriers in the spring. Beijing is also exerting more and more influence on economic activities, unlike what it agreed to when it joined the WTO. Two main problems were identified: China’s state-owned enterprises, their subsidization and behavior on the world market, and the practice of forced technology transfers as a condition for access to the Chinese market.
And also, the Scientific Service of the Bundestag recently came to a less than positive conclusion: By integrating China into the WTO system, one had hoped not only for the economic upswing but also for the further inclusion of the People’s Republic in the rules-based world order. “However, these hopes have so far not been fulfilled and are considered by many observers to have definitively failed,“. The existing WTO system had not been able to prevent the “long-simmering and now open trade conflict between China and the US”.
Everyone agrees on one thing: WTO reform is needed – but what role will China play? Belgian economist André Sapir believes that the People’s Republic will not simply follow a Western agenda. “China will not simply sign on the dotted line,” Sapir, who co-published the book “China and the WTO: Why Multilateralism Still Matters” with Petros Mavroidis, said at an online event hosted by Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. “We need to hear from China as well,” Sapir said. All sides need to move, he said. He said the WTO could also learn from bilateral agreements, such as the EU-China Investment Agreement (CAI), which specifies targets for technology transfer. In his view, the current state of the WTO is not exclusively due to the problems with China.
“We don’t think it’s a China-only problem, it’s a WTO problem,” Mavroidis also stresses. The WTO’s dispute settlement system must be addressed as a priority to make the organization more capable of acting again, says the Columbia University professor. This includes appointing judges as soon as possible to make the system work again, he says. One proposed approach is also to change the existing dispute resolution process and create a separate procedure for protective measures, for example. However, that would only be possible through a consensual amendment to the dispute settlement agreement, which would require the consent of both the US and China. According to Mavroidis, a reform of the trade organization must find a way to deal with the forced transfer of technology – because this mainly takes place in the private sector. The WTO, however, can only regulate state affairs.
Pascal Lamy, the former EU commissioner for external trade and WTO director-general, warned that turning away from China on trade policy would cause more problems than dealing with a globalized China: “Decoupling is the wrong strategy,” Lamy told the Bruegel panel. The West has often “looked elsewhere” in relation to the People’s Republic in recent decades, he said, focusing on market access, for example, rather than state-owned enterprises and IP rights. “We have not worked on real co-existence,” Lamy said. But China and Western countries both need to realize that trade will remain less open if a solution is not found, he said. Lamy disagreed with criticism that China was “cheating” within WTO rules. “The rules have always been weak and they are weak.” The G20 countries should now ask the WTO chief to make a proposal on the rules and how to deal with state-owned enterprises, Lamy said.
Chinese economist and adviser to President Xi Jinping, Justin Yifu Lin, agreed that WTO reform is needed – but that two major core problems are Chinese state-owned enterprises and forced technology transfer is wrong, the former chief economist and World Bank vice president said yesterday. The People’s Republic should not be singled out, Lin stressed. Involuntary technology transfer is an accusation that is not true. His reasoning remained somewhat cryptic: Whoever comes to China to enter the market there must also produce with the best technology. Lin did not elaborate on the fact that the People’s Republic continues to have the controversial status of a developing country. The fact that China is subsidizing companies more strongly has its roots in the transition from a planned to a market economy. However, Lin stressed that China was open to talks on WTO reform: “There are areas where China needs to improve.” The People’s Republic, he said, was happy to be a responsible stakeholder and to take on more responsibility. He sees the appointment of new judges for the WTO dispute settlement system as a priority.
China is likely to be the strongest economic power in a few years, EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said earlier this week at the “EU Trade Day”, which focused on the EU’s new trade strategy unveiled in February, which also proposed reforming the WTO. “It is clear that we have to interact with China and that we have to find a way to do that.” The EU shares concerns about distortions in world trade caused, for example, by China’s socio-economic model, distortions in the conditions of competition such as industrial subsidies and transparency in industrial subsidies, Dombrovskis said. Discussions with the US and Japan on China issues would continue and could lead to “broadening the talks to a wider range of like-minded countries”, the EU Commission Vice-President said.
WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said she understood the concern of many WTO countries that China was benefiting from unfair competitive conditions. But the People’s Republic was also part of the World Trade Organization – and a big one, she stressed. She was convinced that progress could be made if China was presented with facts about the effects of its policies, Okonjo-Iweala said.
The WTO chief said she was “very pleased” to hear that the EU and US were trying to solve problems related to China outside the WTO, as many political problems were “above the pay grade” of the WTO. “But there is sometimes a tendency to use the WTO or trade as a kind of weapon to solve problems that were not originally trade-related,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala acknowledged. China “wants to see measures against agricultural subsidies” such as those often used within the EU and the US.
In her talks with the Chinese leadership, she had not sensed a “lack of will”. But what is clear, she said, is that the WTO must show that it is not specifically targeting China with certain steps, but that it is about general rules. “If China has the feeling that it is only about China, we will meet a lot of resistance.”
The Baltic Sea is not only attractive for holidaymakers. Its lure also reaches governments whose members have other plans there than to spend a few days relaxing on the coast. For the People’s Republic of China, the geographical location of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia on the north-eastern edge of the European Union offers an attractive route towards Arctic waters. In the future, global warming will transform the increasingly less icy Arctic Sea not only into a potential trade route, but also into a possible source of fossil fuels such as oil and gas. The Baltic Sea would be an ideal outpost for China’s ambitions in the Arctic.
The Estonian secret service is highly suspicious of the strategic situation. It was primarily its veto that brought plans for the construction of an underwater railway tunnel from Estonia to Finland in the north of the Baltic Sea to a halt for the time being last summer. The ambitious project is estimated to cost $17 billion. The tunnel would have to be 100 kilometers long, and an artificial island would have to be built halfway along the route. A Finnish businessman had presented a Chinese investor for the financing, which set alarm bells ringing in the secret service.
In a situation report, the authority warned of indications that a Chinese state-owned company was behind the investment and by no means a private interested party. The authors reminded their parliamentarians, but also the EU and NATO, of “the possible use of Chinese foreign investment for political purposes and the possible development of technological dependencies.”
The tunnel would be the extension of a railway network that has been planned for more than a decade and is supposed to connect all three Baltic states as well as Poland. Ever new delays in planning and construction opened a window of opportunity for Chinese interests to potentially introduce their own standards or technologies on EU soil and gain quick and easy access to the Baltic coast with Silk Road infrastructure links. The network is not expected to be operational until 2023 at the earliest. The tunnel project is on hold for now.
China reacted indignantly, as usual in such cases, and accused Estonia of a Cold War mentality. But it got worse. In February of this year, the Lithuanian intelligence service followed suit and banned the security screening software of Chinese vendor Nuctech from its airports. Lithuania’s defense minister Margiris Abukevičius pointed to “short- and long-term threats” from the use of Chinese, as well as Russian, technology in sensitive areas. Explicitly, this also meant the use of components from network equipment supplier Huawei in the development of regional 5G coverage.
The mistrust of the intelligence services counteracts the positive basic mood that prevailed in the Baltic States towards the People’s Republic until a few years ago. “Initially, China was not perceived as a risk factor. Security concerns played virtually no role. These concerns were more directed at Russia,” says Matej Šimalčík, director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies in Bratislava, Slovakia. Accordingly, he says, the Baltic states joined the 17+1 forum of Eastern and Southeastern European states and China with euphoria. “In fact, however, China has failed to deliver on its promises. The hopes for economic fruits of closer cooperation have not materialized,” Šimalčík says.
According to calculations by Danish researchers, only €300 million have flowed into the Baltic States from China as foreign direct investment since 2000. Almost €23 billion went to Germany in the same period. The Baltics are by no means alone in their disappointment. Other countries, such as the Czech Republic (China.Table reported), have also had to admit that Chinese announcements have rarely materialized. The Balts also made their displeasure clear by attending the video feed of the recent 17+1 meeting at the beginning of the year only at the ministerial level, rather than through their respective heads of government. Estonia’s new prime minister, Kaja Kallas, had made it clear that her country preferred the EU 27+1 format, a clear dig at Chinese attempts to split the European Union.
“Given this development, it is likely that the Baltic states will not only put China’s cooperation formats on hold, but also move towards the China-critical spectrum within the EU,” says Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova, head of the New Silk Road Programme at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs (LIIA) in Riga. Nevertheless, studies found that four out of five Latvians, for example, remained interested in Chinese investment despite their pro-European stance. The researchers suggest that this finding could also be the result of relatively low COVID-19 cases in the region. The conclusion: Where COVID-19 is less rampant, the loss of China’s image among the population has been less pronounced because coverage of the disease, including critical portrayals of Chinese masked and wolf-warrior diplomacy, has taken up less space than elsewhere.
However, the Balts are by no means naïve; at best, they are pragmatic. With Russia as a neighbor, Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians have lived with a latent sense of threat for centuries. After their experiences as an involuntary part of the Soviet Union, the region’s six million or so citizens have learned to value their democracy and seem willing to defend it passionately. This has also resulted in their rapprochement with the US and membership of NATO. The People’s Republic, on the other hand, has stoked mistrust with its involvement in Russian military exercises, including in the Baltic Sea in 2017, which has rubbed off on other aspects of its actions. Confucius Institutes, for example, are now seen as an extension of Chinese intelligence services in the Baltics. The Danish Institute for International Studies noted late last year that “China is sending mixed signals: Apart from economic overtures, it is meddling in domestic politics and cooperating militarily with Baltic archrival Russia – and alienating Baltic democracies.”
The US government needlessly escalated its rhetoric against China by claiming that a genocide is being mounted against the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang region. Such a grave charge matters, as genocide is rightly considered “the crime of crimes.” Many pundits are now calling for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, dubbing them the “Genocide Olympics“.
The genocide charge was made on the final day of Donald Trump’s administration by then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who made no secret of his belief in lying as a tool of US foreign policy. Now President Joe Biden’s administration has doubled down on Pompeo’s flimsy claim, even though the State Department’s own top lawyers reportedly share our skepticism regarding the charge.
This year’s State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (HRP) follows Pompeo in accusing China of genocide in Xinjiang. Because the HRP never uses the term other than once in the report’s preface and again in the executive summary of the China chapter, readers are left to guess about the evidence. Much of the report deals with issues like freedom of expression, refugee protection, and free elections, which have scant bearing on the genocide charge.
There are credible charges of human rights abuses against Uyghurs, but those do not per se constitute genocide. And we must understand the context of the Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang, which had essentially the same motivation as America’s foray into the Middle East and Central Asia after the September 2001 attacks: to stop the terrorism of militant Islamic groups.
As the Hong Kong-based businessman and writer Weijian Shan has recounted, China experienced repeated terrorist attacks in Xinjiang during the same years that America’s flawed response to 9/11 led to repeated US violations of international law and massive bloodshed. Indeed, until late 2020, the US classified the Uyghur East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist group, battled Uyghur fighters in Afghanistan, and held many as prisoners. In July 2020, the United Nations noted the presence of thousands of Uyghur fighters in Afghanistan and Syria.
The charge of genocide should never be made lightly. Inappropriate use of the term may escalate geopolitical and military tensions and devalue the historical memory of genocides such as the Holocaust, thereby hindering the ability to prevent future genocides. It behooves the US government to make any charge of genocide responsibly, which it has failed to do here.
Genocide is defined under international law by the UN Genocide Convention (1948). Subsequent judicial decisions have clarified its meaning. Most countries, including the United States, have incorporated the Convention’s definition into their domestic legislation without any significant alteration. In the past few decades, the leading UN courts have confirmed that the definition requires proof to a very high standard of the intentional physical destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
The definition specifies that one of five acts must be perpetrated. Obviously, killing tops the list. The State Department’s report on China says there were “numerous reports” of killings, but that “few or no details were available,” and cites only one case – that of a Uyghur man detained since 2017 who died of natural causes, according to the authorities. The report doesn’t even explain why the official explanation should be questioned.
Technically, genocide can be proven even without evidence that people were killed. But because courts require proof of intent to destroy the group physically, it is hard to make the case in the absence of proof of large-scale killings. This is especially true when there is no direct evidence of genocidal intent, for example in the form of policy statements, but merely circumstantial evidence, what international courts refer to as a “pattern of conduct.”
International courts have repeatedly said that where genocide charges are based only upon inferences drawn from a pattern of conduct, alternative explanations must be ruled out definitively. That’s why the International Court of Justice rejected in 2015 the genocide charge against Serbia and the counter-charge against Croatia, despite evidence of brutal ethnic cleansing in Croatia.
So, what else might constitute evidence of genocide in China? The State Department report refers to mass internment of perhaps one million Uyghurs. If proven, that would constitute a gross violation of human rights; but, again, it is not evidence, per se, of intent to exterminate.
Another of the five recognized acts of genocide is “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” The State Department report refers to China’s notoriously aggressive birth-control policies. Until recently, China strictly enforced its one-child policy on the majority of its population but was more liberal toward ethnic minorities, including the Uyghur.
Today, the one-child policy is no longer applied to the majority Han Chinese, but stricter measures have been imposed on Xinjiang’s Muslim minority, whose families are traditionally larger than China’s average. Still, Xinjiang records a positive overall population growth rate, with the Uyghur population growing faster than the non-Uyghur population in Xinjiang during 2010-18.
The genocide charge is being fueled by “studies” like the Newlines Institute report that recently made global headlines. Newlines is described as a “non-partisan” Washington, DC-based think tank. On closer inspection, it appears to be a project of a tiny Virginia-based university with 153 students, eight full-time faculty, and an apparently conservative policy agenda. Other leading human rights organizations have refrained from using the term.
UN experts are rightly calling for the UN to investigate the situation in Xinjiang. China’s government, for its part, has recently stated that it would welcome a UN mission to Xinjiang based on “exchanges and cooperation,” not on “guilty before proven.”
Unless the State Department can substantiate the genocide accusation, it should withdraw the charge. It should also support a UN-led investigation of the situation in Xinjiang. The work of the UN, and notably of UN Human Rights Special Rapporteurs, is essential to promote the letter and spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and Chair of the United Nations Network for Sustainable Development Solutions. William Schabas is Professor of Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law at Leiden University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate.
US President Joe Biden’s image has improved in his first months in office – except in China: The percentage of respondents expressing a positive opinion of the US rose in 13 of 14 countries surveyed between January 20th and April 25th, according to a poll by US data firm Morning Consult. China was the only country where positive perceptions of the US declined among respondents.
They were probably their last talks in this framework when Angela Merkel and her cabinet met the Chinese ministers and head of government Li virtually on Wednesday. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk explains the background to the consultation and classifies the constructive but, at the same time, openly critical mood. Merkel wants to stick to the CAI investment agreement despite international criticism – and she hopes that her successors will not abandon the tradition of regular meetings between the two governments.
Much promised, little delivered: Marcel Grzanna shows that it was precisely false promises and military exercises with Russia that scratched China’s image in the Baltics, so much so that the country is now seen as a security risk by the Baltic states.
Beijing also made big promises when it joined the WTO in 2001. The twentieth anniversary of accession will soon be celebrated, but the balance sheet drawn up by EU experts is anything but rosy, as Amelie Richter analyses.
Have a good start to the day.
The German-Chinese government consultations on Wednesday were about a broad “spectrum of cooperation”, as Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the start of the online meeting with head of government Li Keqiang. Both sides initially assured each other of their appreciation. But then it quickly became clear that the talks also had gruff passages. “China and Germany have different views on some issues. That is an objective fact,” Li said.
There were conflicts in several fields. “The topic of human rights has traditionally always played a role in our talks,” Merkel said. “There are also differences of opinion on this, especially when we think of the situation in Hong Kong, for example.” Li, however, forbade himself to criticize here. Germany should negotiate “on the basis of equal treatment and non-interference in internal affairs”. Then China could create “favorable conditions for further smooth development of cooperation”. He pointed out that both Germany and China have an interest in open markets and free trade. In this context, Hong Kong, according to the Chinese reading, falls under the “internal affairs” from which Germany should stay away. And even if Merkel at least mentions Hong Kong: She did not offer concrete assistance to the democracy movement there. In the meantime, it has been largely crushed.
The closed round also dealt with the fate of the CAI investment agreement. This is still awaiting confirmation by the European Parliament – and China has just fallen out with it by imposing entry bans on MEPs. But while critics are increasingly doubtful about the viability of the CAI, Merkel continued to speak positively about it. “I think this investment agreement can also be a cornerstone for economic relations, for transparent relations, for mutual market access and reciprocity,” the chancellor said. It would create more legal certainty. China would have to abide by international labor standards in the future, she said. “Reasonable working conditions everywhere and for all people in Germany and in China are of great importance.”
Despite the disagreements, the summit also produced a long series of deals and memoranda of understanding. At intergovernmental consultations, the ministers also meet with their advisers and top officials in smaller rounds to decide on open issues. In the process, they also provide the impetus for further development of cooperation. According to diplomats, the format is generally fruitful: What is put on paper in the presence of high-ranking leaders is considered binding in the Chinese apparatus. The meetings thus provide material for implementation at lower official levels for many months to come. Merkel now hopes that such consultations will also take place under her successors – “You know that these will be my last government consultations.”
Specifically, this time there were, among other things, declarations of intent and discussions on the following points:
The documents from the line ministries were vague at this stage, but it is just a matter of setting a starting point for the work of line officials.
The German Chambers of Commerce in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou came forward on the occasion of the government consultations with their wish list of issues to be improved in relations. It is based on a survey of 320 local companies. “Travel restrictions continue to rank first with 78 percent,” said Clas Neumann, president of the German Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. Planned investments, therefore, remain on hold. German companies are now hoping for the introduction of a “fast-track procedure” that will allow specialists and managers to enter the country more easily. Mechanical engineering companies in particular have problems helping their customers to set up production lines.
Almost half of the companies surveyed want a level playing field with Chinese companies. They fear being disadvantaged by the idea of “dual circulation“. Therefore, German business in China has high expectations of the CAI, from which China’s promise to gradually put EU competitors on an equal footing can be read.
China has been a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for almost 20 years – on the upcoming anniversary in November, the relationship between the People’s Republic and the other WTO member countries is not in its best shape – which is not primarily Beijing’s fault, according to analysts. An overview of the situation:
Hopes were high: Beijing was supposed to adapt to global rules-based trade when it joined the WTO in 2001. The result since then, however, has been sobering, with numerous complaints against China – most recently, the trade war between Washington and the US also showed the WTO dispute settlement mechanism the limits of the organization. The behavior of the People’s Republic angers many sides: China has still not fulfilled its promise to join the WTO’s agreements on public tenders, the German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association VDMA criticized this week. The association called on the German government to work to ensure that China refrains from special requests, among other things, according to a statement.
China is considered a developing country in the WTO and thus receives many exemptions from WTO rules. Beijing does not want to give up this status. However, the “undifferentiated status seems less and less justified for a country that officially maintains a military budget of around $180 billion, wants to invest a trillion dollars globally in infrastructure projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and invests worldwide in technology companies as part of the industrial policy plan ‘Made in China 2025’ or subsidizes key industries in its own country in the triple-digit billion range,” criticized the Federation of German Industries (BDI) at the end of last year.
There is also trouble over China’s bid to join the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). Negotiations for this entered their 14th year in 2021 – and there is no end in sight for the time being. Beijing did submit a new offer in 2019. But it was still “unacceptable”, according to a US government report on foreign trade barriers in the spring. Beijing is also exerting more and more influence on economic activities, unlike what it agreed to when it joined the WTO. Two main problems were identified: China’s state-owned enterprises, their subsidization and behavior on the world market, and the practice of forced technology transfers as a condition for access to the Chinese market.
And also, the Scientific Service of the Bundestag recently came to a less than positive conclusion: By integrating China into the WTO system, one had hoped not only for the economic upswing but also for the further inclusion of the People’s Republic in the rules-based world order. “However, these hopes have so far not been fulfilled and are considered by many observers to have definitively failed,“. The existing WTO system had not been able to prevent the “long-simmering and now open trade conflict between China and the US”.
Everyone agrees on one thing: WTO reform is needed – but what role will China play? Belgian economist André Sapir believes that the People’s Republic will not simply follow a Western agenda. “China will not simply sign on the dotted line,” Sapir, who co-published the book “China and the WTO: Why Multilateralism Still Matters” with Petros Mavroidis, said at an online event hosted by Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. “We need to hear from China as well,” Sapir said. All sides need to move, he said. He said the WTO could also learn from bilateral agreements, such as the EU-China Investment Agreement (CAI), which specifies targets for technology transfer. In his view, the current state of the WTO is not exclusively due to the problems with China.
“We don’t think it’s a China-only problem, it’s a WTO problem,” Mavroidis also stresses. The WTO’s dispute settlement system must be addressed as a priority to make the organization more capable of acting again, says the Columbia University professor. This includes appointing judges as soon as possible to make the system work again, he says. One proposed approach is also to change the existing dispute resolution process and create a separate procedure for protective measures, for example. However, that would only be possible through a consensual amendment to the dispute settlement agreement, which would require the consent of both the US and China. According to Mavroidis, a reform of the trade organization must find a way to deal with the forced transfer of technology – because this mainly takes place in the private sector. The WTO, however, can only regulate state affairs.
Pascal Lamy, the former EU commissioner for external trade and WTO director-general, warned that turning away from China on trade policy would cause more problems than dealing with a globalized China: “Decoupling is the wrong strategy,” Lamy told the Bruegel panel. The West has often “looked elsewhere” in relation to the People’s Republic in recent decades, he said, focusing on market access, for example, rather than state-owned enterprises and IP rights. “We have not worked on real co-existence,” Lamy said. But China and Western countries both need to realize that trade will remain less open if a solution is not found, he said. Lamy disagreed with criticism that China was “cheating” within WTO rules. “The rules have always been weak and they are weak.” The G20 countries should now ask the WTO chief to make a proposal on the rules and how to deal with state-owned enterprises, Lamy said.
Chinese economist and adviser to President Xi Jinping, Justin Yifu Lin, agreed that WTO reform is needed – but that two major core problems are Chinese state-owned enterprises and forced technology transfer is wrong, the former chief economist and World Bank vice president said yesterday. The People’s Republic should not be singled out, Lin stressed. Involuntary technology transfer is an accusation that is not true. His reasoning remained somewhat cryptic: Whoever comes to China to enter the market there must also produce with the best technology. Lin did not elaborate on the fact that the People’s Republic continues to have the controversial status of a developing country. The fact that China is subsidizing companies more strongly has its roots in the transition from a planned to a market economy. However, Lin stressed that China was open to talks on WTO reform: “There are areas where China needs to improve.” The People’s Republic, he said, was happy to be a responsible stakeholder and to take on more responsibility. He sees the appointment of new judges for the WTO dispute settlement system as a priority.
China is likely to be the strongest economic power in a few years, EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said earlier this week at the “EU Trade Day”, which focused on the EU’s new trade strategy unveiled in February, which also proposed reforming the WTO. “It is clear that we have to interact with China and that we have to find a way to do that.” The EU shares concerns about distortions in world trade caused, for example, by China’s socio-economic model, distortions in the conditions of competition such as industrial subsidies and transparency in industrial subsidies, Dombrovskis said. Discussions with the US and Japan on China issues would continue and could lead to “broadening the talks to a wider range of like-minded countries”, the EU Commission Vice-President said.
WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said she understood the concern of many WTO countries that China was benefiting from unfair competitive conditions. But the People’s Republic was also part of the World Trade Organization – and a big one, she stressed. She was convinced that progress could be made if China was presented with facts about the effects of its policies, Okonjo-Iweala said.
The WTO chief said she was “very pleased” to hear that the EU and US were trying to solve problems related to China outside the WTO, as many political problems were “above the pay grade” of the WTO. “But there is sometimes a tendency to use the WTO or trade as a kind of weapon to solve problems that were not originally trade-related,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala acknowledged. China “wants to see measures against agricultural subsidies” such as those often used within the EU and the US.
In her talks with the Chinese leadership, she had not sensed a “lack of will”. But what is clear, she said, is that the WTO must show that it is not specifically targeting China with certain steps, but that it is about general rules. “If China has the feeling that it is only about China, we will meet a lot of resistance.”
The Baltic Sea is not only attractive for holidaymakers. Its lure also reaches governments whose members have other plans there than to spend a few days relaxing on the coast. For the People’s Republic of China, the geographical location of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia on the north-eastern edge of the European Union offers an attractive route towards Arctic waters. In the future, global warming will transform the increasingly less icy Arctic Sea not only into a potential trade route, but also into a possible source of fossil fuels such as oil and gas. The Baltic Sea would be an ideal outpost for China’s ambitions in the Arctic.
The Estonian secret service is highly suspicious of the strategic situation. It was primarily its veto that brought plans for the construction of an underwater railway tunnel from Estonia to Finland in the north of the Baltic Sea to a halt for the time being last summer. The ambitious project is estimated to cost $17 billion. The tunnel would have to be 100 kilometers long, and an artificial island would have to be built halfway along the route. A Finnish businessman had presented a Chinese investor for the financing, which set alarm bells ringing in the secret service.
In a situation report, the authority warned of indications that a Chinese state-owned company was behind the investment and by no means a private interested party. The authors reminded their parliamentarians, but also the EU and NATO, of “the possible use of Chinese foreign investment for political purposes and the possible development of technological dependencies.”
The tunnel would be the extension of a railway network that has been planned for more than a decade and is supposed to connect all three Baltic states as well as Poland. Ever new delays in planning and construction opened a window of opportunity for Chinese interests to potentially introduce their own standards or technologies on EU soil and gain quick and easy access to the Baltic coast with Silk Road infrastructure links. The network is not expected to be operational until 2023 at the earliest. The tunnel project is on hold for now.
China reacted indignantly, as usual in such cases, and accused Estonia of a Cold War mentality. But it got worse. In February of this year, the Lithuanian intelligence service followed suit and banned the security screening software of Chinese vendor Nuctech from its airports. Lithuania’s defense minister Margiris Abukevičius pointed to “short- and long-term threats” from the use of Chinese, as well as Russian, technology in sensitive areas. Explicitly, this also meant the use of components from network equipment supplier Huawei in the development of regional 5G coverage.
The mistrust of the intelligence services counteracts the positive basic mood that prevailed in the Baltic States towards the People’s Republic until a few years ago. “Initially, China was not perceived as a risk factor. Security concerns played virtually no role. These concerns were more directed at Russia,” says Matej Šimalčík, director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies in Bratislava, Slovakia. Accordingly, he says, the Baltic states joined the 17+1 forum of Eastern and Southeastern European states and China with euphoria. “In fact, however, China has failed to deliver on its promises. The hopes for economic fruits of closer cooperation have not materialized,” Šimalčík says.
According to calculations by Danish researchers, only €300 million have flowed into the Baltic States from China as foreign direct investment since 2000. Almost €23 billion went to Germany in the same period. The Baltics are by no means alone in their disappointment. Other countries, such as the Czech Republic (China.Table reported), have also had to admit that Chinese announcements have rarely materialized. The Balts also made their displeasure clear by attending the video feed of the recent 17+1 meeting at the beginning of the year only at the ministerial level, rather than through their respective heads of government. Estonia’s new prime minister, Kaja Kallas, had made it clear that her country preferred the EU 27+1 format, a clear dig at Chinese attempts to split the European Union.
“Given this development, it is likely that the Baltic states will not only put China’s cooperation formats on hold, but also move towards the China-critical spectrum within the EU,” says Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova, head of the New Silk Road Programme at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs (LIIA) in Riga. Nevertheless, studies found that four out of five Latvians, for example, remained interested in Chinese investment despite their pro-European stance. The researchers suggest that this finding could also be the result of relatively low COVID-19 cases in the region. The conclusion: Where COVID-19 is less rampant, the loss of China’s image among the population has been less pronounced because coverage of the disease, including critical portrayals of Chinese masked and wolf-warrior diplomacy, has taken up less space than elsewhere.
However, the Balts are by no means naïve; at best, they are pragmatic. With Russia as a neighbor, Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians have lived with a latent sense of threat for centuries. After their experiences as an involuntary part of the Soviet Union, the region’s six million or so citizens have learned to value their democracy and seem willing to defend it passionately. This has also resulted in their rapprochement with the US and membership of NATO. The People’s Republic, on the other hand, has stoked mistrust with its involvement in Russian military exercises, including in the Baltic Sea in 2017, which has rubbed off on other aspects of its actions. Confucius Institutes, for example, are now seen as an extension of Chinese intelligence services in the Baltics. The Danish Institute for International Studies noted late last year that “China is sending mixed signals: Apart from economic overtures, it is meddling in domestic politics and cooperating militarily with Baltic archrival Russia – and alienating Baltic democracies.”
The US government needlessly escalated its rhetoric against China by claiming that a genocide is being mounted against the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang region. Such a grave charge matters, as genocide is rightly considered “the crime of crimes.” Many pundits are now calling for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, dubbing them the “Genocide Olympics“.
The genocide charge was made on the final day of Donald Trump’s administration by then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who made no secret of his belief in lying as a tool of US foreign policy. Now President Joe Biden’s administration has doubled down on Pompeo’s flimsy claim, even though the State Department’s own top lawyers reportedly share our skepticism regarding the charge.
This year’s State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (HRP) follows Pompeo in accusing China of genocide in Xinjiang. Because the HRP never uses the term other than once in the report’s preface and again in the executive summary of the China chapter, readers are left to guess about the evidence. Much of the report deals with issues like freedom of expression, refugee protection, and free elections, which have scant bearing on the genocide charge.
There are credible charges of human rights abuses against Uyghurs, but those do not per se constitute genocide. And we must understand the context of the Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang, which had essentially the same motivation as America’s foray into the Middle East and Central Asia after the September 2001 attacks: to stop the terrorism of militant Islamic groups.
As the Hong Kong-based businessman and writer Weijian Shan has recounted, China experienced repeated terrorist attacks in Xinjiang during the same years that America’s flawed response to 9/11 led to repeated US violations of international law and massive bloodshed. Indeed, until late 2020, the US classified the Uyghur East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist group, battled Uyghur fighters in Afghanistan, and held many as prisoners. In July 2020, the United Nations noted the presence of thousands of Uyghur fighters in Afghanistan and Syria.
The charge of genocide should never be made lightly. Inappropriate use of the term may escalate geopolitical and military tensions and devalue the historical memory of genocides such as the Holocaust, thereby hindering the ability to prevent future genocides. It behooves the US government to make any charge of genocide responsibly, which it has failed to do here.
Genocide is defined under international law by the UN Genocide Convention (1948). Subsequent judicial decisions have clarified its meaning. Most countries, including the United States, have incorporated the Convention’s definition into their domestic legislation without any significant alteration. In the past few decades, the leading UN courts have confirmed that the definition requires proof to a very high standard of the intentional physical destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
The definition specifies that one of five acts must be perpetrated. Obviously, killing tops the list. The State Department’s report on China says there were “numerous reports” of killings, but that “few or no details were available,” and cites only one case – that of a Uyghur man detained since 2017 who died of natural causes, according to the authorities. The report doesn’t even explain why the official explanation should be questioned.
Technically, genocide can be proven even without evidence that people were killed. But because courts require proof of intent to destroy the group physically, it is hard to make the case in the absence of proof of large-scale killings. This is especially true when there is no direct evidence of genocidal intent, for example in the form of policy statements, but merely circumstantial evidence, what international courts refer to as a “pattern of conduct.”
International courts have repeatedly said that where genocide charges are based only upon inferences drawn from a pattern of conduct, alternative explanations must be ruled out definitively. That’s why the International Court of Justice rejected in 2015 the genocide charge against Serbia and the counter-charge against Croatia, despite evidence of brutal ethnic cleansing in Croatia.
So, what else might constitute evidence of genocide in China? The State Department report refers to mass internment of perhaps one million Uyghurs. If proven, that would constitute a gross violation of human rights; but, again, it is not evidence, per se, of intent to exterminate.
Another of the five recognized acts of genocide is “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” The State Department report refers to China’s notoriously aggressive birth-control policies. Until recently, China strictly enforced its one-child policy on the majority of its population but was more liberal toward ethnic minorities, including the Uyghur.
Today, the one-child policy is no longer applied to the majority Han Chinese, but stricter measures have been imposed on Xinjiang’s Muslim minority, whose families are traditionally larger than China’s average. Still, Xinjiang records a positive overall population growth rate, with the Uyghur population growing faster than the non-Uyghur population in Xinjiang during 2010-18.
The genocide charge is being fueled by “studies” like the Newlines Institute report that recently made global headlines. Newlines is described as a “non-partisan” Washington, DC-based think tank. On closer inspection, it appears to be a project of a tiny Virginia-based university with 153 students, eight full-time faculty, and an apparently conservative policy agenda. Other leading human rights organizations have refrained from using the term.
UN experts are rightly calling for the UN to investigate the situation in Xinjiang. China’s government, for its part, has recently stated that it would welcome a UN mission to Xinjiang based on “exchanges and cooperation,” not on “guilty before proven.”
Unless the State Department can substantiate the genocide accusation, it should withdraw the charge. It should also support a UN-led investigation of the situation in Xinjiang. The work of the UN, and notably of UN Human Rights Special Rapporteurs, is essential to promote the letter and spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and Chair of the United Nations Network for Sustainable Development Solutions. William Schabas is Professor of Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law at Leiden University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate.
US President Joe Biden’s image has improved in his first months in office – except in China: The percentage of respondents expressing a positive opinion of the US rose in 13 of 14 countries surveyed between January 20th and April 25th, according to a poll by US data firm Morning Consult. China was the only country where positive perceptions of the US declined among respondents.
