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By STUART LAU
with PHELIM KINE
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HELLO. This is Stuart Lau reporting in Brussels. Phelim Kine will be with you from Washington on Thursday.
XI IN EUROPE
HE’S COMING: As we reported back in March, Chinese leader Xi Jinping will go to Paris next week, as the Chinese foreign ministry revealed on Monday. He’ll also go to Serbia and Hungary, two countries whose leaders closely align with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. This will be the first time the Chinese leader sets foot in (non-Russian) Europe in five years, since coronavirus started in Wuhan.
IN MACRON’S CARD: French President Emmanuel Macron has booked in plenty of time with Xi. On Monday, before Xi is treated to a state dinner, Macron will invite European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Paris for trilateral talks with Xi, mirroring the three-way format in Beijing about a year ago. Macron will also meet Xi separately.
Berlin? Non: Unlike the Paris-Berlin-Brussels meeting with Xi in 2019, the German chancellor is not going to show up in the broader European discussion Xi’s going to have. That won’t be a big loss to Berlin anyway — Olaf Scholz just made his trip to Beijing and meet Xi earlier this month (which yielded little in the end.)
Family vibe: Macron and Xi will then make a trip to the southwestern département of Hautes-Pyrénées. The place means a lot to the French president personally, as the 46-year-old used to go for holidays there as a child, and it’s also where his grandmother is buried.
Step back from Putin: Macron will present "his analysis of the evolution of the war, and defend the points raised by Ukrainians," an Elysée official told POLITICO’s Clea Caulcutt.
Not exactly taking Blinken’s cue: While Macron will "share our concerns about the activities of certain Chinese companies despite sanctions taken against Russia,” the French official appeared lukewarm when asked about remarks made by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said last week in Beijing that Chinese support for Russia’s military prowess wouldn’t be conducive to improving ties with Europe. "We have our own policy on China which is different to the public policy of the U.S.,” the official said.
BEIJING WANTS TO TALK EVs: Electric vehicles continue to be a hot potato in Beijing’s diplomatic circles. China is threatening the French with a cognac tariff to get them to withdraw support for von der Leyen’s probe into state subsidies for made-in-China electric vehicles.
Trade talks: Macron is expected to "take stock" with Xi on the reinforced EU instruments of trade defense — including the foreign subsidies regulation on wind turbines and solar panels, as well as a probe into the closed Chinese market for public procurement on medical equipment — which the French official said were introduced in order to have "more credibility” in conversations with China.
By one estimate: The EU would need 50 percent tariffs to curb imports of Chinese electric cars, a new Rhodium Group study shows, per Financial Times.
PLAN B-UDAPEST: Never mind the EU’s scheme of taxing Chinese EVs. Xi is expected to officiate a new plant for electric vehicles in Hungary, according to VSquare. Great Wall Motors (GWM), the eighth largest car maker in China, is slated to open the factory in the city of Pécs.
Newcomer: GWM traditionally focused on making SUVs, but after some acquisitions it has also started developing electric vehicles. The car-maker now produces cars under several brands. The new plant in the south of Hungary will reportedly occupy 600 hectares of land, though it's not entirely clear how large the factory itself will be. Koen Verhelst writes in to report.
That’s not all: A high-speed rail connecting Budapest Airport and the capital — a journey that currently takes half an hour on a non-stop bus — is also part of the next projects under China’s Belt and Road initiative, with Chinese loan financing, technology, and contractors, the report says.
ESPIONAGE
CHINA WAGED CYBERWARS ON BELGIUM’S EX-PM: Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, a member of the European Parliament, has been revealed as the latest victim of a Chinese state-linked espionage campaign targeting officials working on an inter-parliamentary committee focused on China. Antoaneta Roussi and Pieter Haeck report.
Verhofstadt is among a group of five Belgian lawmakers targeted by the Chinese hacker group APT31 for his work on China through IPAC. The other targeted Belgian lawmakers include Samuel Cogolati, a Green MP; Els Van Hoof, chair of Belgian parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee; Hilde Vautmans, a liberal MEP; and Georges Dallemagne, a federal deputy.
Diplomatic row: Last week, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib summoned the Chinese ambassador over the allegations.
Demand: The five lawmakers issued a joint statement on Monday, demanding that the government “formally attribute these attacks to APT31, as the United States and the United Kingdom have already done.” They also asked Belgium to impose sanctions on the hackers.
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT LOOPHOLE? According to Reinhard Bütikofer, a European Parliament lawmaker from Germany, the German authorities did not inform him even though “as far as I know, the FBI informed [Germany] that I was targeted by the attack of APT31.”
NOW READ THIS: The Financial Times has this story on what it describes as “a remarkable number of weddings in recent years” between Chinese female students and French seamen who work at naval bases.
UK CORNER
LAWMAKER CRITICAL OF BEIJING KICKED OUT OF DJIBOUTI: British Conservative MP Tim Loughton, who’s sanctioned by Beijing, says he was deported from Djibouti earlier this month because of the east African country’s close ties to China.
Speaking to BBC on Monday, Loughton recalled arriving at the airport, having his passport scanned and asked about his purpose of the visit. “I told them I was a member of parliament and then it went all very frosty,” he said.
“Djibouti is effectively a vassal state of China — what China wants, Djibouti kowtows to and having a troublesome MP who has been sanctioned by China turning up on their doorstep was clearly something they didn’t want to entertain,” he added. BBC has more. China denied the allgations.
GETTING RID OF SURVEILLANCE TOOLS: Britain is set to remove all Chinese-made surveillance technology from sensitive sites by April 2025, according to junior minister Alex Burghart from the Cabinet Office, which oversees national security issues.
No big deal: According to the British government, the vast majority of sensitive sites had never deployed the equipment. Of the small number of sites that did have it, about half of them had since replaced it. “Work is pressing ahead to remove remaining devices, with approximately 70 per cent of sites expected to have their surveillance equipment removed by October this year,” Burghart said in a statement. Reuters has more.
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
DEBATE TIME: POLITICO Europe co-hosted the Maastricht Debate last night featuring the leading candidates standing in the European elections in June (watch it here if you’re an EU geek) and there were some hot takes on TikTok from von der Leyen.
A ban, perhaps: Von der Leyen hinted that banning TikTok in the EU is an option during the debate. “It is not excluded," she said last night, after the moderator referred to the U.S, where TikTok faces a national ban unless it is sold by its owner, ByteDance. Pieter Haeck reported.
We did it first: She also instantly added that the Commission was "the very first institution worldwide to ban TikTok on our corporate phones,” adding: "We know exactly the danger of TikTok."
Facing an uphill battle in Brussels: Last week, TikTok decided to suspend a feature that rewarded users for interacting with the TikTok Lite app, after the Commission started looking into the feature under the bloc's content-moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
CHINA ALLEGES U.S. CYBERSPACE CRIMES: A Chinese state-backed cyber-security organization has accused the U.S. of a litany of illegal cyber activities aimed to "maintain hegemony." The U.S. government "has been the biggest cyber attacker, cyber weapon maker, and cyber order breaker in the world…seriously threatening the development and security of the global cyberspace." the China Cybersecurity Industry Alliance said in a report published by state media on Monday. China's Foreign Ministry piled on. The U.S. should "stop endangering peace, stability and security in cyberspace," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Monday in response to the report.
BEIJING DISMISSES BLINKEN'S ELECTION, RUSSIA CLAIMS: The Chinese government is pushing back against Secretary of State Antony Blinken's allegation that China is seeking to interfere in the U.S. presidential election in November. China "will not interfere in any way in the election … the U.S. needs to stop the paranoia and shadow-chasing, stop slinging mud at China to divert attention and deflect the blame," the foreign ministry's Lin said Monday. Lin was responding to Blinken's assertion that the Biden administration had "evidence of attempts to influence and arguably interfere" in the election in an interview with CNN last week.
Lin also took aim at Blinken's warning last week that Beijing must stop exporting materials that allow Russia to rebuild its industrial base or face U.S. sanctions. "We urge the U.S. to stop vilifying, pressuring and scapegoating China, stop going after Chinese companies with illicit unilateral sanctions," Lin responded on Monday. Chinese state-owned firms are providing key components for Russia's defense industrial base, including microelectronics and machine tools that have "a material effect against Ukraine" and constitute "a growing threat that Russia poses to countries in Europe," Blinken told reporters Friday. Phelim has the full story here.
U.S.-TAIWAN RESUME TRADE DEAL TALKS: U.S. officials began meetings on Monday with their Taiwanese counterparts aimed to finalize a bilateral trade deal. Assistant United States Trade Representative for China, Mongolia and Taiwan Affairs, Terry McCartin, is in Taipei to discuss next steps toward finalizing the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade, USTR said in a statement. The trade deal is part of a Biden administration multi-prong strategy to support Taiwan in the face of Beijing's economic coercion efforts targeting the self-governing island.
AUSTIN CONVENES INDO-PACIFIC COUNTERPARTS IN HAWAII: Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will convene a meeting of his counterparts from Japan, Australia and the Philippines in Hawaii on Thursday. It will mark the second-ever meeting of the quartet and will focus on "ways to deepen defense and security ties among the four countries," said a Pentagon statement published Friday. The meeting will raise hackles in Beijing which has accused the U.S. of seeking to create a China-countering "Asian NATO."
HEADLINES
Bloomberg: Heavy rains threaten China's rice as extreme weather grips south.
CNN: Xi shakes up China's military in rethink of how to 'fight and win' future wars.
Reuters: China set to launch high-stakes mission to moon’s ‘hidden’ side.
MANY THANKS: To editor Christian Oliver, reporters Clea Caulcutt, Pieter Haeck, Koen Verhelst and Antoaneta Roussi and producer Seb Starcevic.
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