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By STUART LAU
with PHELIM KINE
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WE’RE BACK! You may have been busy spending family time on the beach, but August wasn’t an entirely uneventful month on the U.S.-China and EU-China fronts. Jake Sullivan went to Beijing for the first time as U.S. National Security Advisor; the trade war between Brussels and Beijing went up a notch; and the Chinese-Philippine maritime clashes showed no sign of de-escalation. This is Stuart Lau with your first September issue from Brussels; Phelim Kine will report from Washington on Thursday.
EU’S CHANGE OF GUARD
SAY ADIOS TO AN OLD FRIEND: One of Brussels’ friendlier faces for Beijing is on the way out. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief for the last five years, is due to step down and be succeeded by former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, tentatively by November. Kallas was spotted in Brussels last week, getting briefings from EU officials and diplomats as she prepares for her nomination hearing at the European Parliament. How will Kallas — who was put on a wanted list by Moscow — deal with the most influential bestie that the Kremlin still has?
Less confusion on China: Borrell has been repeatedly criticized for inconsistent messaging on China. In the words of a senior European diplomat, Borrell is “quite soft” on China in private. While he’s turned critical of Beijing’s trade tactics over recent months, the Spanish politician has also been equivocal on China’s human rights issues, failing at times to stick to the EU’s stated policy on Taiwan.
"Borrell was always conflicted in his messaging on China," Janka Oertel, Asia director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said. “Kallas will definitely bring a new sound to Europe's China policy.”
While Kallas hasn’t spoken much on China yet, she’s been consistently one of the fiercest critics of Russia.
“Kallas is going to be tougher on China compared to Borrell,” said Abigaël Vasselier, head of Foreign Relations at the MERICS think tank and a former EU diplomat on China policy.
And that’s thanks to Moscow: “She looks at European foreign and security policy from a Russia angle. This is what she has dealt with, and that she has experience with, and it does mean that the prism through which she is going to look at Europe in relation to China is going to be, first and foremost, through the China-Russia axis,” Vasselier added.
Don’t say Europe didn’t warn you, Beijing… Vasselier said that this expected change of tone should not come as a surprise to Beijing. “We kept telling the Chinese, ‘Your support to the war in Ukraine is at some point going to have a long-lasting impact on the relationship.’ And this is it. We are going to have leaders that simply look at China through that angle and this is what the Chinese are going to realize, that they will have tough leaders,” she said.
The other big difference — how much you like your boss: Oertel pointed out that Borrell had never been “fully aligned” with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen‘s assessment on China policy. In a way, that’s an extension of the worst-kept secret in Brussels, that von der Leyen had little love lost for Borrell given his inarticulate foreign policy stances, including on Russia.
In contrast, Kallas’ team have reiterated her “excellent” relationship with the German politician who’ll be serving a second term at the helm of the European Commission. Kallas “can serve as an amplifier to von der Leyen in designing a foreign and security policy,” Oertel said.
IN OTHER EU-CHINA NEWS
SCOOP — CHINA TELLS EU TO HOLD FIRE: Chinese EV-makers offer off-ramps including price and volume pledges in a plea to the EU not to impose duties on imported made-in-China electric vehicles (EVs), three people close to the negotiations told our ace trade colleagues Antonia Zimmerman and Camille Gijs.
In a nutshell: According to two of the people, one pledge was put forward by the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products. It's a broad proposal, covering all Chinese EV-makers, and foresees options that go beyond a price threshold, such as a volume cap on exports of EVs. Read the full story here.
DANISH PM WARNS OF CHINA DEPENDENCY: Europe is committing a “big mistake” by being “too dependent” on Chinese technology, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. “We were too dependent on Russian gas and oil and now we're repeating the same with China on many technologies, which is a big mistake,” she told the Financial Times.
SANCHEZ TO CHINA: Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is expected to visit China Sept. 7-12, including a meeting with President Xi Jinping, Reuters reports.
A lot to chew over: Sánchez, who will be accompanied by a deputy trade minister, will visit Beijing and Shanghai against a backdrop of China’s anti-dumping probe into EU pork imports, which was launched in retaliation against the EU’s tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The probe will hit Spain hard, as it’s Europe’s largest pork exporter, accounting for almost a quarter of China’s imported pork last year.
TAIWAN COSIES UP TO THE CZECHS: Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech Republic to build a semiconductor cluster, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu said on Friday. Taipei Times reports.
CLASHES IN AND OVER PHILIPPINES
STATE SLAMS 'DELIBERATE' CHINESE NAVAL COLLISION: Another week, another China-Philippines dust-up in the South China Sea. The State Department strongly condemned China's Coast Guard on Saturday for having "deliberately collided three times with a Philippine Coast Guard vessel … causing damage to the vessel and jeopardizing the safety of the crew onboard," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Monday blamed the Philippines for the incident despite video footage clearly showing a Chinese vessel ramming a Philippine ship near the Sabina Shoal on Saturday. Beijing's response was "fake news and misinformation" aimed to cover up China's "illegal, inhumane, and barbaric action," Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said in an X post Saturday.
EU, CHINA CLASH OVER PHILIPPINES: Beijing also hit out at the EU’s statement in support of the Philippines.
On Sunday, EU spokesperson Nabila Massrali said in a statement that the EU “condemns the dangerous actions by Chinese Coast Guard vessels against lawful Philippine maritime operations in the South China Sea on August 31.”
A day later, Beijing pushed back on the EU. Wang Lutong, head of the Europe division at the Chinese foreign ministry, said the EU statement “ignores facts of incidents and China's rights.” “We urge EU to stop interference which is not in its own interests,” he tweeted. “Freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is never a problem.”
US-CHINA CLIMATE TALKS
BIDEN CLIMATE ENVOY'S 'FINAL EFFORT' OUTREACH: Uncertainty about the outcome of the U.S. presidential election looms over several days of meetings between President Joe Biden's senior adviser for international climate policy, John Podesta, and his Chinese counterpart, Liu Zhenmin, which kicks off in Beijing this week.
Podesta lands days after national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi discussed the need for Podesta's visit to produce "concrete steps to tackle the climate crisis." Neither the White House nor Podesta's office have released details of his Beijing meeting agenda.
The Podesta-Liu meet-up may be the Biden administration's "final diplomatic effort" to get traction on elements of the U.S.-China Sunnylands’ agreement on bilateral climate action brokered by Biden's then-climate envoy John Kerry in November, said Joanna Lewis, an associate professor at Georgetown University and an expert on China's climate policies. And there's a low bar for success. Any sign of "forward movement on climate action by China…would be a win," Lewis said.
However, concern about how the result of the presidential election may affect U.S. climate policy after Biden leaves office in January makes breakthroughs unlikely. "A large part of [Podesta's visit] is to help both countries to prepare for the election," said Asia Society Policy Institute Climate Hub director, Li Shuo. A victory for Donald Trump — who pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord in his first administration —means that Beijing can expect U.S.-China cooperation to become "a black hole —there won’t be any official climate engagement or dialogue," Li said.
The best-case scenario is that Podesta and Liu agree on potential climate targets ahead of the United Nations COP29 international climate conference in November, days after the presidential election on Nov. 5. But the ability of the U.S. to deliver on such targets hinges on Vice President Kamala Harris — who is likely to maintain Biden's climate policy settings — winning the election.
If Harris wins, Biden may have a shot at pushing Chinese leader Xi Jinping toward a more ambitious climate agenda with the U.S. in likely face-to-face meetings at both the APEC summit in Peru that opens Nov. 10 and the G20 meeting in Brazil that convenes eight days later. Climate could become a U.S.-China diplomatic "ice-breaking issue even before Harris gets into office," said Li , who cautioned that the outcome was far from certain.
U.S.-China climate discussions likely won't grind to a complete halt even if a possible future Trump administration severs high-level contacts on the issue. Lower-level dialogues set up under the Sunnylands agreement may continue the way similar groupings persisted after Beijing suspended climate cooperation following then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Taiwan trip in 2022. "When the rest of the world can see that the United States and China can find areas of agreement … it sends a very important signal to the rest of the world that the two largest [carbon] emitters are taking this issue seriously and that the rest of the world should as well," Lewis said.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
TRUMP CAN WALK TARIFF TOUGH TALK: Trump may tap the obscure but longstanding International Emergency Economic Powers Act to push through his threatened sharp increase in tariffs if elected to a second term," POLITICO's Doug Palmer reported Sunday. Trump has touted a universal tariff of 10 or 20 percent on all goods imported into the U.S., which currently total more than $3 trillion annually. The Republican presidential nominee has also suggested imposing a 60 percent tariff on all Chinese goods, building on duties of either 7.5 percent or 25 percent that he imposed on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods during 2018 and 2019. Trade experts say the act could even enable Trump to deliver on his pledge to phase out imports of essential goods from China over a period of four years.
EMBASSY URGES RELEASE OF RIGHTS ACTIVISTS: The U.S. embassy in Beijing took to X during the U.S. Labor Day holiday weekend to urge Chinese authorities to release a pair of imprisoned human rights activists. "We call on the PRC to release human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and activist Xu Yan, on trial in Suzhou for 'inciting state subversion' for advocating for the rights of PRC citizens," the embassy said in a post on Saturday. Authorities detained the couple in 2023 while they were en route to a meeting with EU officials in Beijing.
TAIWAN SHRUGS AT GOP PLATFORM BRUSH-OFF: Taiwan's former Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the self-governing island's government isn't concerned by the Republican National Committee's move to exclude mention of Taiwan in the 2024 party platform released in July. That omission — followed by Trump's assertion later that month that Taiwan stole the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing industry and that trying to defend the island would be futile — have fanned fears in Taipei of faltering Republican commitment to Taiwan's security.
Wu — who is now the secretary-general of Taiwan's National Security Council — said the government of President Lai Ching-te isn't worried. "Some people told us that we shouldn’t be too serious [about] platforms," Wu said on a panel at the Globsec security forum in Prague on Saturday. Democrats and Republicans "fight all the time, but they continue to tell us there’s one issue that unites them, that is Taiwan, and we can continue to count on either the Republicans or Democrats to continue to support Taiwan," Wu said.
IN HEADLINES
BLOOMBERG: China warns Japan of retaliation for possible new chip curbs.
GUARDIAN: China's internet police went from targeting bloggers to their followers.
REUTERS: South Africa asks China for better balanced trade.
MANY THANKS: To editor Paul Dallison, reporters Antonia Zimmerman, Camille Gijs, Doug Palmer and producer Lucia Mackenzie.
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