Global News Insider

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If anyone in China or abroad believed that after Biden’s inauguration as the US president the overall situation in Sino-US relations would improve or at least there would be change of the deteriorating trend in those relations, recent events have completely destroyed even the most optimistic hopes for the better.

The US and the European Union have recently increased pressure on China. This week, the EU imposed sanctions on China for alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang . China immediately retaliated against the European Union and blacklisted 10 European legislators and four entities. On Friday, 26th March, China imposed sanctions on nine UK citizens, including five MPs, for spreading what Beijing called “lies and disinformation” about the country.

According to CNBC, worsening tensions between the European Union and China may even jeopardize an investment deal that the two sides recently negotiated. The investment deal between China and EU agreed in late December 2020 was believed to become a breakthrough in long lasting EU-China negotiations on mutual investment opportunities. Now with sanctions imposed against European citizens there is a risk that this investment deal will not be approved by the EU institutions.

Many human rights organisations, including international organisation like UN, have carefully monitored the situation with human rights of Uyghurs in China for quite a long time, but the timing of European sanctions came unexpectedly at the very moment when US and Canada imposed their sanctions on China. This raises the question whether the EU has its own independent opinion on this issue or it rather acts in full concert with its western allies? Some European lawmakers on China’s black list even doubt whether China shall host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022.

The move by the US and its allies came shortly after the talks between the US and Chinese officials had exposed tensions between the world’s two largest economies. In early January, the United States banned the import of cotton from China’s northeastern province of Xinjiang. This act, together with sanctions against China on human rights violations, is further evidence of the further worsening trend in the Sino-US relations. But if in the case of the USA this kind of behavior can be understood in terms of considering China as a strategic rival to the US, the EU’s actions seem very contradictory. If the evidence on human rights violations in Xinjiang is irrefutable and monitored by the independent EU institutions, why has the EU ever agreed to an investment deal with China?

Against the background of deteriorating relations between the EU and China and an impasse in relations between Russia and the EU, rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing is becoming more than a reality. The latest visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to China only confirms this trend. As a result of sanctions imposed on both countries China and Russia would strengthen their mutual cooperation. We cannot rule out the possibility that China and Russia may introduce some barriers to the operation of Western companies in their markets as a countermeasure. We hope that EU officials had carefully learned the possible risks of their actions, before they fully admitted the US rhetorics on China.