Today is the day that not only EU-China observers have been eagerly awaiting. After the vote was postponed in late September, the EU member states will decide today on the countervailing duties on Chinese EVs.
In Berlin, the debate on whether to abstain or vote against the tariffs lasted until the last minute. Germany’s position is also a general signal to the EU and Brussels’ China policy, which will undoubtedly lead to further discussions – not only between Germany and France but also within the German government coalition.
In our second analysis, Angela Koeckritz scrutinizes the idea of Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to establish an Asian NATO. The resonance of the idea has so far been reserved, writes Koeckritz, who has spoken to analysts on the subject. Meanwhile, other security pacts are forming in the Indo-Pacific region.
Ahead of the vote on additional tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, the dispute between the two largest EU states became apparent in Berlin. French President Emmanuel Macron used his appearance at the Berlin Global Dialogue in the German capital this week to campaign for the EU’s planned countervailing duties against Chinese car imports – however, the German government cannot warm to this course.
According to information available to Table.Briefings, Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock propose that Germany abstain from the vote this Friday in Brussels. Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Finance Minister Christian Lindner from the Free Democratic Party (FDP), on the other hand, oppose the tariffs. Voices in the FDP say that abstaining would not help anyone, adding that the car industry, one of the country’s most important economic sectors with millions of jobs, should not be backstabbed by a trade conflict with China, so the tariffs should be firmly rejected. The Chancellor argues similarly.
Macron, on the other hand, campaigned for a “level playing field” at the ESMT university on Wednesday and referred to the 100 percent punitive tariffs imposed by the USA against China. China had also threatened to impose tariffs on spirits, the President said, reminding the audience that France is a cognac nation.
This week, Habeck, Minister of Economic Affairs from the Green Party, emphasized that he also rejects punitive tariffs and that a political solution must be found with China. He favored a negotiated solution, for example, in the form of minimum prices for Chinese EVs. “I am completely against tariffs,” the Minister of Economic Affairs also said at the Berlin Global Dialogue. “The question is how we can find a political solution in this specific situation.” At the same time, he urged the EU to present a united front towards Beijing. This is probably also why Habeck rejects an outright no.
The position of the automotive industry is clear: “If I were Germany, I would vote no,” said Mercedes CEO Ola Kallenius on Wednesday. “Not to weaken our negotiating position, but to signal that we want to negotiate a fair win-win situation with fair competitive conditions.” The tariffs also jeopardize Mercedes’ business of manufacturing vehicles in China and exporting them to Europe. The German Association of the Automotive Industry warns that the additional tariffs could threaten the competitiveness of the already ailing European automotive industry.
“A vote by the EU states to impose high additional tariffs on EVs from China from the end of October would be a further step away from global cooperation,” VDA President Hildegard Mueller told the German Press Agency. “This measure would further increase the risk of a global trade conflict.” Mueller called for the German government to take a clear stance against the punitive tariffs, saying abstention was not an option.
“Nobody wants a dispute with China. But it is obvious that Chinese electric cars are being subsidized, which is leading to a massive market distortion in Europe,” said Daniel Caspary (CDU), Chairman of the CDU/CSU Group in the European Parliament. “A negotiated solution remains our preferred goal. However, if these talks do not lead to a fair solution, the EU will have no choice but to take action.”
The additional tariffs are estimated to range from 7.8 percent for Tesla to as much as 35.3 percent for SAIC. Other manufacturers such as BYD and Geely are in between. Added to this are ten percent customs tariffs, which already apply anyway. The additional tariffs in force since July in the form of bank guarantees will not be levied retroactively. This has already been announced by the EU Commission. According to EU regulations, the EU Commission can impose the tariffs for the next five years unless a qualified majority of 15 EU countries, representing 65 percent of the EU population, vote against the plan.
According to EU circles, France, Greece, Italy and Poland will vote in favor of the tariffs – these countries alone already represent around 39 percent of the EU population. The Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium will also vote in favor. In July, Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria also voted in favor – as did Spain. If the vote turns out this way again, 60 percent of the EU population will be represented. Without Spain, it would be around 50 percent. It is thus very unlikely that the “no” side will achieve the necessary 65 percent.
Spain’s decision on the matter has been unclear for some time: Following a visit by Pedro Sánchez to Beijing, Spain’s Prime Minister explained that additional tariffs were not the preferred solution. Madrid later rowed back and emphasized that it had not yet decided. In the vote in July, Hungary, Malta, Cyprus, and Slovakia voted “no.” It is highly likely that this will also be the case on Friday. In addition to Germany, the following countries abstained in July: Sweden, Austria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia.
Even though the decision has been made, negotiations between the EU and China are still ongoing. This involves, for example, setting minimum prices for Chinese EVs. Chinese manufacturers had submitted offers to the EU Commission. The first offer was rejected on the grounds that the deadline had expired. A second proposal is still under discussion. Details are not yet known. In addition to a minimum import price, the price commitment could also include a volume cap.
It was a sensational idea that Shigeru Ishiba put forward last week, shortly before he was elected leader of the ruling LDP party and took office as Japan’s new prime minister on Tuesday: Ishiba called for a collective Asian defense alliance, a kind of Asian NATO. “Ukraine today is Asia tomorrow. Replacing Russia with China and Ukraine with Taiwan, the absence of a collective self-defense system like NATO in Asia means that wars are likely to break out because there is no obligation for mutual defense. Under these circumstances, the creation of an Asian version of NATO is essential to deter China by its Western allies,” wrote the Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in an article for the Hudson Institute.
After both the United States and India rejected the proposal, Japan’s Foreign and Defence Ministers rowed back on Wednesday. “It’s one idea for the future,” assured Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, adding that it was not directed against any specific country.
As unlikely as such an alliance seems in the foreseeable future, Ishiba’s ideas not only reveal a lot about his political ambitions – he wants to be seen as a foreign policy visionary in the tradition of Shinzō Abe – but above all about the sense of “crisis, even panic, that is spreading in parts of the LDP,” Jagannath Panda, who heads the Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs, told Table.Briefings. “The connection between the authoritarian states of China, Russia and North Korea, all of which are in Japan’s neighborhood, has recently grown stronger.”
According to Masahiro Matsumura, a professor at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, it is also important to look at “what has happened recently in a period of less than two months.” A Chinese spy plane entered Japanese airspace, two Chinese surveillance ships crossed Japanese waters, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning sailed between two Japanese islands and a Russian military aircraft violated Japanese airspace during joint Chinese-Russian military exercises.
Most Japanese still consider themselves relatively protected due to their location. Yet, many feel like “the frog in the boiling water” who doesn’t even recognize the danger because the temperature is only slowly rising, says Masahiro Matsumura. “Chinese behavior has gradually become more aggressive over the past ten or 20 years.”
He believes that Ishiba’s move is an attempt to cushion himself against the uncertainty of the upcoming US election. This is especially true for a potential President Donald Trump, but the USA’s foreign policy commitment could also decline under Kamala Harris.
The situation is tricky because the safety of American allies in Asia primarily depends on the United States. A collective defense alliance, SEATO, founded in 1954 as the “Pacific counterpart to NATO” under US leadership, failed. Even then, conditions in the region were still the same today: “Asian countries do not share the same or similar threats,” says Mansi Kumari, professor at Amity University in Delhi. “Asia is too big and too diverse to reach a consensus on an ‘Asian NATO‘.”
Instead, a so-called “hub and spokes” model emerged with the San Francisco System. As the “hub,” the USA signed bilateral political, military and economic commitments with the “spokes” Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. For some time now, this system has been developing into a so-called “latticework,” in which Pacific countries strengthen bilateral, trilateral or minilateral cooperation among themselves, such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between Australia, India, Japan and the USA. Or the tripartite cooperation between South Korea, the USA and Japan or various agreements with the Philippines.
A kind of Asian NATO is also unrealistic because it would be directed against China, says Kumari Mansi. Asian countries have very different relationships with the superpower. Asian US allies and countries involved in territorial disputes with China, such as Japan or India, also maintain significant trade relations with China. “Countries are trying to maximize their interests by not taking sides in the power struggle between the US and China. Why choose one camp when you can benefit from both?”
Ken Jimbo, Director of the International House of Japan in Tokyo, also believes that the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific will be based on flexible networks rather than firm alliances in the future. These arrangements “enable greater adaptability and allow countries such as India and Indonesia to work together without having to give up their principles of strategic autonomy and non-alignment.”
In view of the tectonic geopolitical power shifts, the security situation in the Indo-Pacific remains extremely complex and precarious. Shigeru Ishiba’s political future is also uncertain: He has called for a snap election on 27 October.
German European politician Engin Eroglu is the new Chair of the European Parliament’s China delegation. Eroglu (Free Voters) was elected to the post on Thursday. Eroglu is the Deputy National Chair and State Chair of the Free Voters in the German state of Hesse and has been a member of the European Parliament for the party since 2019. In the past, he has spoken out clearly against human rights violations in China. In the spring of this year, it was revealed that Eroglu became the target of a Chinese cyberattack.
“The China delegation is one of the most important delegations in the Parliament, and as its chair, I will, of course, work to help shape the China discussion in the Parliament,” Mr Eroglu told Table.Briefings. He went on to say that the Parliament has played an important role in the Brussels-China debate in recent years. “One of our tasks will be to further sharpen and expand our competence on China.”
Markéta Gregorová from the Czech Pirate Party was elected as deputy. Gregorová is a co-initiator of the EU Parliament’s Taiwan Friendship Group and also sits on the Trade Committee. The German MEP René Repasi from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is also deputy chair. Repasi was already deputy chair of the delegation in the previous term. He is also Chair of the German SPD MEPs in the European Parliament.
The China delegation consists of 38 full members. The committee is currently not traveling to the People’s Republic as some members are still subject to Chinese sanctions. ari
This cheese found in a Bronze Age grave in Xiaohe, northwest China, is somewhat past its prime. The 3,500-year-old cheese nuggets were discovered two decades ago on the necks of three mummies. But researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have only now been able to use the latest scientific methods to examine them further. The samples contained evidence of goat’s and cow’s milk and the end product was identified as a type of early kefir. This is surprising, as the Xiaohe people were genetically lactose intolerant. However, through selective fermentation, they apparently made milk and cheese digestible enough to integrate them into their diet.
Today is the day that not only EU-China observers have been eagerly awaiting. After the vote was postponed in late September, the EU member states will decide today on the countervailing duties on Chinese EVs.
In Berlin, the debate on whether to abstain or vote against the tariffs lasted until the last minute. Germany’s position is also a general signal to the EU and Brussels’ China policy, which will undoubtedly lead to further discussions – not only between Germany and France but also within the German government coalition.
In our second analysis, Angela Koeckritz scrutinizes the idea of Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to establish an Asian NATO. The resonance of the idea has so far been reserved, writes Koeckritz, who has spoken to analysts on the subject. Meanwhile, other security pacts are forming in the Indo-Pacific region.
Ahead of the vote on additional tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, the dispute between the two largest EU states became apparent in Berlin. French President Emmanuel Macron used his appearance at the Berlin Global Dialogue in the German capital this week to campaign for the EU’s planned countervailing duties against Chinese car imports – however, the German government cannot warm to this course.
According to information available to Table.Briefings, Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock propose that Germany abstain from the vote this Friday in Brussels. Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Finance Minister Christian Lindner from the Free Democratic Party (FDP), on the other hand, oppose the tariffs. Voices in the FDP say that abstaining would not help anyone, adding that the car industry, one of the country’s most important economic sectors with millions of jobs, should not be backstabbed by a trade conflict with China, so the tariffs should be firmly rejected. The Chancellor argues similarly.
Macron, on the other hand, campaigned for a “level playing field” at the ESMT university on Wednesday and referred to the 100 percent punitive tariffs imposed by the USA against China. China had also threatened to impose tariffs on spirits, the President said, reminding the audience that France is a cognac nation.
This week, Habeck, Minister of Economic Affairs from the Green Party, emphasized that he also rejects punitive tariffs and that a political solution must be found with China. He favored a negotiated solution, for example, in the form of minimum prices for Chinese EVs. “I am completely against tariffs,” the Minister of Economic Affairs also said at the Berlin Global Dialogue. “The question is how we can find a political solution in this specific situation.” At the same time, he urged the EU to present a united front towards Beijing. This is probably also why Habeck rejects an outright no.
The position of the automotive industry is clear: “If I were Germany, I would vote no,” said Mercedes CEO Ola Kallenius on Wednesday. “Not to weaken our negotiating position, but to signal that we want to negotiate a fair win-win situation with fair competitive conditions.” The tariffs also jeopardize Mercedes’ business of manufacturing vehicles in China and exporting them to Europe. The German Association of the Automotive Industry warns that the additional tariffs could threaten the competitiveness of the already ailing European automotive industry.
“A vote by the EU states to impose high additional tariffs on EVs from China from the end of October would be a further step away from global cooperation,” VDA President Hildegard Mueller told the German Press Agency. “This measure would further increase the risk of a global trade conflict.” Mueller called for the German government to take a clear stance against the punitive tariffs, saying abstention was not an option.
“Nobody wants a dispute with China. But it is obvious that Chinese electric cars are being subsidized, which is leading to a massive market distortion in Europe,” said Daniel Caspary (CDU), Chairman of the CDU/CSU Group in the European Parliament. “A negotiated solution remains our preferred goal. However, if these talks do not lead to a fair solution, the EU will have no choice but to take action.”
The additional tariffs are estimated to range from 7.8 percent for Tesla to as much as 35.3 percent for SAIC. Other manufacturers such as BYD and Geely are in between. Added to this are ten percent customs tariffs, which already apply anyway. The additional tariffs in force since July in the form of bank guarantees will not be levied retroactively. This has already been announced by the EU Commission. According to EU regulations, the EU Commission can impose the tariffs for the next five years unless a qualified majority of 15 EU countries, representing 65 percent of the EU population, vote against the plan.
According to EU circles, France, Greece, Italy and Poland will vote in favor of the tariffs – these countries alone already represent around 39 percent of the EU population. The Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium will also vote in favor. In July, Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria also voted in favor – as did Spain. If the vote turns out this way again, 60 percent of the EU population will be represented. Without Spain, it would be around 50 percent. It is thus very unlikely that the “no” side will achieve the necessary 65 percent.
Spain’s decision on the matter has been unclear for some time: Following a visit by Pedro Sánchez to Beijing, Spain’s Prime Minister explained that additional tariffs were not the preferred solution. Madrid later rowed back and emphasized that it had not yet decided. In the vote in July, Hungary, Malta, Cyprus, and Slovakia voted “no.” It is highly likely that this will also be the case on Friday. In addition to Germany, the following countries abstained in July: Sweden, Austria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia.
Even though the decision has been made, negotiations between the EU and China are still ongoing. This involves, for example, setting minimum prices for Chinese EVs. Chinese manufacturers had submitted offers to the EU Commission. The first offer was rejected on the grounds that the deadline had expired. A second proposal is still under discussion. Details are not yet known. In addition to a minimum import price, the price commitment could also include a volume cap.
It was a sensational idea that Shigeru Ishiba put forward last week, shortly before he was elected leader of the ruling LDP party and took office as Japan’s new prime minister on Tuesday: Ishiba called for a collective Asian defense alliance, a kind of Asian NATO. “Ukraine today is Asia tomorrow. Replacing Russia with China and Ukraine with Taiwan, the absence of a collective self-defense system like NATO in Asia means that wars are likely to break out because there is no obligation for mutual defense. Under these circumstances, the creation of an Asian version of NATO is essential to deter China by its Western allies,” wrote the Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in an article for the Hudson Institute.
After both the United States and India rejected the proposal, Japan’s Foreign and Defence Ministers rowed back on Wednesday. “It’s one idea for the future,” assured Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, adding that it was not directed against any specific country.
As unlikely as such an alliance seems in the foreseeable future, Ishiba’s ideas not only reveal a lot about his political ambitions – he wants to be seen as a foreign policy visionary in the tradition of Shinzō Abe – but above all about the sense of “crisis, even panic, that is spreading in parts of the LDP,” Jagannath Panda, who heads the Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs, told Table.Briefings. “The connection between the authoritarian states of China, Russia and North Korea, all of which are in Japan’s neighborhood, has recently grown stronger.”
According to Masahiro Matsumura, a professor at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, it is also important to look at “what has happened recently in a period of less than two months.” A Chinese spy plane entered Japanese airspace, two Chinese surveillance ships crossed Japanese waters, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning sailed between two Japanese islands and a Russian military aircraft violated Japanese airspace during joint Chinese-Russian military exercises.
Most Japanese still consider themselves relatively protected due to their location. Yet, many feel like “the frog in the boiling water” who doesn’t even recognize the danger because the temperature is only slowly rising, says Masahiro Matsumura. “Chinese behavior has gradually become more aggressive over the past ten or 20 years.”
He believes that Ishiba’s move is an attempt to cushion himself against the uncertainty of the upcoming US election. This is especially true for a potential President Donald Trump, but the USA’s foreign policy commitment could also decline under Kamala Harris.
The situation is tricky because the safety of American allies in Asia primarily depends on the United States. A collective defense alliance, SEATO, founded in 1954 as the “Pacific counterpart to NATO” under US leadership, failed. Even then, conditions in the region were still the same today: “Asian countries do not share the same or similar threats,” says Mansi Kumari, professor at Amity University in Delhi. “Asia is too big and too diverse to reach a consensus on an ‘Asian NATO‘.”
Instead, a so-called “hub and spokes” model emerged with the San Francisco System. As the “hub,” the USA signed bilateral political, military and economic commitments with the “spokes” Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. For some time now, this system has been developing into a so-called “latticework,” in which Pacific countries strengthen bilateral, trilateral or minilateral cooperation among themselves, such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between Australia, India, Japan and the USA. Or the tripartite cooperation between South Korea, the USA and Japan or various agreements with the Philippines.
A kind of Asian NATO is also unrealistic because it would be directed against China, says Kumari Mansi. Asian countries have very different relationships with the superpower. Asian US allies and countries involved in territorial disputes with China, such as Japan or India, also maintain significant trade relations with China. “Countries are trying to maximize their interests by not taking sides in the power struggle between the US and China. Why choose one camp when you can benefit from both?”
Ken Jimbo, Director of the International House of Japan in Tokyo, also believes that the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific will be based on flexible networks rather than firm alliances in the future. These arrangements “enable greater adaptability and allow countries such as India and Indonesia to work together without having to give up their principles of strategic autonomy and non-alignment.”
In view of the tectonic geopolitical power shifts, the security situation in the Indo-Pacific remains extremely complex and precarious. Shigeru Ishiba’s political future is also uncertain: He has called for a snap election on 27 October.
German European politician Engin Eroglu is the new Chair of the European Parliament’s China delegation. Eroglu (Free Voters) was elected to the post on Thursday. Eroglu is the Deputy National Chair and State Chair of the Free Voters in the German state of Hesse and has been a member of the European Parliament for the party since 2019. In the past, he has spoken out clearly against human rights violations in China. In the spring of this year, it was revealed that Eroglu became the target of a Chinese cyberattack.
“The China delegation is one of the most important delegations in the Parliament, and as its chair, I will, of course, work to help shape the China discussion in the Parliament,” Mr Eroglu told Table.Briefings. He went on to say that the Parliament has played an important role in the Brussels-China debate in recent years. “One of our tasks will be to further sharpen and expand our competence on China.”
Markéta Gregorová from the Czech Pirate Party was elected as deputy. Gregorová is a co-initiator of the EU Parliament’s Taiwan Friendship Group and also sits on the Trade Committee. The German MEP René Repasi from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is also deputy chair. Repasi was already deputy chair of the delegation in the previous term. He is also Chair of the German SPD MEPs in the European Parliament.
The China delegation consists of 38 full members. The committee is currently not traveling to the People’s Republic as some members are still subject to Chinese sanctions. ari
This cheese found in a Bronze Age grave in Xiaohe, northwest China, is somewhat past its prime. The 3,500-year-old cheese nuggets were discovered two decades ago on the necks of three mummies. But researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have only now been able to use the latest scientific methods to examine them further. The samples contained evidence of goat’s and cow’s milk and the end product was identified as a type of early kefir. This is surprising, as the Xiaohe people were genetically lactose intolerant. However, through selective fermentation, they apparently made milk and cheese digestible enough to integrate them into their diet.
