The Guardian: Trump’s ‘strategy’ pushes allies towards China

In the search for stability, some Western nations are turning to a country that many in Washington consider an existential threat.

If geopolitics depends, at least in part, on cordiality among global leaders, China made an unexpected move to win Ireland’s favor when the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) visited Beijing this month. Meeting with Irish leader Micheál Martin in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that one of his favorite books as a teenager was Irish author Ethel Voynich’s “The Gadfly,” a novel set in the revolutionary fervor of Italy in the 1840s.

“It was unusual for us to end up discussing The Gadfly and its impact on both of us, but whatever,” Martin told reporters in Beijing.

China is on a charm offensive with Western leaders, a path opened by Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic and destabilizing forays onto the global stage. Although Europe breathed a sigh of relief this week when Trump withdrew his threat to use military force in Greenland and said he would not impose tariffs on opponents of his Arctic plans, the US no longer looks like a reliable partner.

An editorial in the Chinese newspaper Global Times made Beijing’s position clear: titled “Europe must seriously consider building a China-EU community with a shared future”, the state media article stated that the world was at risk of “returning to the law of the jungle” and that China and the EU should cooperate in building “a shared future for humanity”.

No country can afford to break ties with or actually antagonize the world’s largest economy. But in the search for stability, U.S. allies are turning to the country that many in Washington see as an existential threat: China.

“With US policy unpredictable again – evidenced by tensions and threats of tariffs on Greenland – European leaders are making sure to keep communication channels with Beijing open,” says Eva Seiwert, senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. “The risk is that this approach will sustain or even deepen existing dependence on China at a time when Europe’s stated objective is to reduce risks.”

Mark Carney, elected prime minister of Canada on a pledge to resist US intimidation, set the tone for the recalibration of relations between Western countries and China when he traveled to Beijing last week. “Canada is forging a new strategic partnership with China,” said Carney. The global order, he asserted, was at a point of “rupture… not transition.”

Officially, China views this rebalancing with caution. Another article published in state media this week explicitly refuted the idea that China welcomed the current chaos.

Song Bo, a researcher at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy, says Chinese policymakers are unwilling to publicly admit that the global order has fundamentally changed.

“We have always believed that we are the biggest beneficiaries of the international order established after the Cold War,” says Song, referring to China’s rapid economic growth that accompanied the globalization of the 1990s and 2000s. “It is difficult for us to accept that the current order is undergoing a major transformation.”

Another perspective on the subject comes from Ryan Haas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. In a post on

While China professes loyalty to the rules-based international order, Xi Jinping has long spoken of a world undergoing “major changes not seen in a century,” echoing Carney’s sentiment about a global “disruption.” Seiwert states: “Beijing could use Carney’s language rhetorically to suggest a shared diagnosis of US-centered instability, even if there is no convergence on values, interests, or outcomes.”

Carney’s China strategy stems, in part, from his hostile relationship with Trump. In Trump’s confusing Davos speech, he harshly criticized Carney for not being “grateful” to the US. “Canada exists thanks to the United States. Remember that, Mark,” Trump barked.

Instead of bowing to his southern neighbor, Carney is trying to lessen his country’s dependence on the United States. In Beijing, he agreed to reduce tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100% to 6.1%, breaking with an alignment with Washington that had left one of China’s main exports practically blocked from the North American market.

Chinese electric vehicles are now on track to account for about a fifth of electric vehicle sales in Canada, if not more. The deal is a major political victory for China, even if it only represents a small portion of China’s electric vehicle exports. Concerns about economic dependence on China and even Chinese interference in Canadian elections appear to have lost importance.

Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, arrives in China next week under slightly different circumstances. He has a more cordial relationship with Trump, although his rhetoric has hardened in recent days with disagreements over Greenland and the Chagos Islands. And he is under pressure at home to demonstrate firmness towards China on security and human rights, two issues that have inflamed the controversy surrounding the application to build a Chinese mega-embassy in London, approved by the government this week despite strong opposition.

“Starmer may not have proven himself to be an effective or knowledgeable prime minister on China, but he is not stupid,” says Steve Tsang, director of the China Studies Institute at SOAS. “He will want to improve relations with China to boost the UK economy and trade, but he will not consider China a more reliable partner for the UK than the US.”

However, like Carney, Starmer hopes to seal deals and attract much-needed investment into the UK economy. He will be joined by representatives from major British companies and is expected to revitalize the UK-China CEO council, despite growing concerns about the national security risks posed by Chinese investments.

Approaching Beijing is far from simple. Song notes that the European Commission leadership remains hostile to China, something Chinese officials and business leaders have difficulty reconciling with the supposedly more cordial ties between China and some European countries.

According to Song, the bloc’s general coldness and the war in Ukraine are the biggest obstacles to deepening ties. “Without resolving these two issues, Sino-European relations will not see any significant improvement,” says Song.

Ukraine could be a priority on the agenda of Petteri Orpo, Prime Minister of Finland, who arrives in Beijing this Sunday. “China’s support for Russia has certainly strained relations with the Nordic countries, and Finland is no exception,” says Patrik Andersson, an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. Andersson notes, though, that Finland’s relations with China have typically been more stable than those of Sweden and Norway, and this visit will likely strengthen those ties.

In the months following Russia’s 2022 large-scale invasion of Ukraine, European countries have grappled with the fact that many depend on Russia for essential products like fossil fuels. There have been calls to avoid a similar situation with China, the world’s most important supplier of clean energy technology. As early as 2020, the chairman of the United Kingdom’s joint intelligence committee, Simon Gass, stated: “China represents a large-scale risk.”

Such concerns may be taking a backseat as middle powers seek to cling to a multilateralist world in the face of a wave of destruction wrought by the country that was once their greatest defender. China insists that Trump’s behavior is no cause for celebration. But the result could still strengthen Beijing’s position on the world stage.

Posted by Amy Hawkins in The Guardian*