After rebuking a senior Czech lawmaker for visiting Taiwan this month, the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, obtained an obscenity-laced public letter that punctuated simply how far China’s standing in Europe has fallen.
“You need to be ashamed,” one other lawmaker, Pavel Novotny, an outspoken district mayor in Prague, wrote, calling the Chinese language “impudent, inconsiderate, uncouth clowns” and demanding an apology.
The outburst was not an remoted one.
In nation after nation, China is facing rising anger over its insurance policies and its conduct — from commerce to human rights — a significant setback on a continent that Beijing has seen as a extra pragmatic, and thus extra keen, accomplice to supply ballast in opposition to sharply deteriorating relations with america.
For China’s chief, Xi Jinping, a long-lasting shift in European views poses an infinite problem. Within the brief time period, it threatens to undermine the nation’s post-pandemic financial restoration by stifling new investments as america restricts them, particularly in excessive tech. In the long term, it might blunt his ambitions for China to supply a substitute for america as the worldwide chief dictating the principles for governance and commerce.
European frustrations with Chinese language insurance policies have been mounting, however they crystallized this yr within the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. China’s obfuscation of its early missteps in containing the coronavirus and its failure at “masks diplomacy” soured public sentiment in a number of nations, particularly the Netherlands and Spain, the place protecting gear and different provides that have been bought, not donated, have been discovered to be faulty.
That has hardened views that China’s authoritarianism is basically at odds with Europe’s political values regardless of continued pledges that Beijing seeks peaceable collaboration. So has the imposition of a brand new national security law in Hong Kong that has been used to crack down on dissent within the semiautonomous territory.
“It makes it actually laborious for them to convey a message of cooperation and peacefulness and harmonious society, if on the identical time you see schoolgirls being crushed up by the Hong Kong police,” mentioned Janka Oertel, director of the Asia Program on the European Council on Overseas Relations, referring to an incident captured on video just lately.
Mr. Xi on Monday referred to as for a “complete strategic partnership” throughout a digital summit with the European Union’s management, however the assembly, which was as soon as purported to cement nearer financial ties, ended with little progress on even a extra restricted funding pact. As a substitute it uncovered rifts that had beforehand been pushed to the background.
Mr. Xi confronted — and brushed apart — unusually harsh criticism on a wide range of points that mirrored rising widespread animosity towards China. The Europeans accused China of slow-walking guarantees to fight local weather change. They criticized the brand new crackdown in Hong Kong and the longstanding one in Tibet. The Europeans additionally raised the imprisonment of a Swedish bookseller, the arrests of two Canadians in transparent retaliation for a criminal extradition case, and China’s unilateral strikes in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
“Actual variations exist, and we gained’t paper over them,” Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, the union’s policymaking physique, mentioned after the digital summit on Monday.
Alluding to those that would play the continent off the world’s two quarreling powers, he added, “Europe must be a participant, not a enjoying area.”
For now, Europe has not gone so far as the Trump administration, which has moved to dismantle many years of political, financial and social engagement, setting the stage for a new era of confrontation whatever the end result of the U.S. presidential election.
Nonetheless, China faces pushback from European nations over the identical points which have infected relations with america — if not but with the fevered pitch of the Trump administration’s most hawkish officers.
A number of nations, together with Britain, France and Slovenia, have adopted america in transferring to limit investments by Huawei, the Chinese language telecommunications large, whereas others are leaving open the chance.
Italy, which solely final yr signed up for China’s Belt and Highway funding and improvement venture, adopted a parliamentary decision in assist of Hong Kong’s protesters and has joined different nations in opposing the brand new safety legislation imposed by Beijing.
Even Germany, the nation with probably the most commerce with China and a driving drive in European coverage, has signaled rising impatience. The international minister, Heiko Maas, got here to the Czechs’ protection, warning Mr. Wang, his Chinese language counterpart, that “threats don’t slot in right here.” The following day Germany unveiled a brand new technique that thrusts it into the geopolitical battle over China’s army enlargement within the Indian and Pacific oceans.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, mentioned on Monday that the European Union remained dedicated to the precept of multilateral cooperation. She mentioned Europe was open to coping with China, regardless of the political variations which are more and more overshadowing the financial agenda.
“In sure areas issues have elevated,” she mentioned after two hours of discussions with Mr. Xi. “Now we have to acknowledge that. However we’re additionally going to aim to search out options, even when we’re going to crawl ahead little by little.”
Ms. Merkel’s predilection to not combine politics and economics in coping with China has come underneath rising strain, because it has with Russia over President Vladimir V. Putin’s repressive conduct.
Ms. Merkel had initially deliberate Monday’s assembly as a summit in Leipzig with Mr. Xi and the entire union’s leaders that will culminate within the signing of an funding treaty that has been years within the making. The in-person summit was derailed by the pandemic. The hoped-for settlement stalled over China’s refusal to make significant concessions that will open its home market to European firms.
“With market entry it’s not a query of assembly midway, however rebalancing the asymmetry,” mentioned Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Fee, who additionally participated in Monday’s conferences. “We’d like China to maneuver on these points.”
It isn’t clear that China is keen to take action, particularly as its economy has begun churning again whereas others are nonetheless staggering from the pandemic. Mr. Xi stays dedicated to a heavy state function within the economic system that has for years delayed pledges to open up necessary sectors to international competitors. On points involving human rights, he additionally bluntly advised the Europeans that his nation doesn’t want lectures, in line with Xinhua, China’s state-run information company.
That type of tone has exacerbated tensions. “Every thing has modified after the pandemic, however they’re nonetheless utilizing this very inflexible and hard hegemonic diplomatic technique,” mentioned Wu Qiang, an unbiased political analyst in Beijing.
The mounting tensions spilled into public when Mr. Wang visited 5 nations forward of Monday’s summit: Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, France and Germany. The tour was extensively seen as an effort to fix fences, however he confronted a flurry of criticism as a substitute, and stirred much more controversy of his personal.
In Norway, he warned in opposition to awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to protesters in Hong Kong. He implied that doing so might once more plunge bilateral relations into a deep freeze, as occurred when the prize committee, which is unbiased of the Norwegian authorities, gave the award to the Chinese language pro-democracy dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010.
In Rome, Paris and Berlin, he confronted sharp questions on China’s new safety legislation in Hong Kong, which he was advised violated Beijing’s pledges to respect the territory’s autonomy and democracy. Mr. Wang responded defiantly, echoing China’s place that Hong Kong is an inside matter, not topic to dialogue, just like the crackdown on Muslims within the far western province of Xinjiang.
It was the Chinese language official’s response on Taiwan, nonetheless, that rankled most. The president of the Czech Senate, Milos Vystrcil, arrived in Taiwan in the midst of Mr. Wang’s go to, main a delegation of enterprise executives to the self-governing island that China claims as its territory.
“The Chinese language authorities and Chinese language individuals gained’t take a laissez-faire angle or sit idly by and can make him pay a heavy worth for his shortsighted conduct and political opportunism,” Mr. Wang mentioned.
The menace, delivered on German soil, would possibly as soon as have been ignored, however in right this moment’s local weather it prompted an uncommon show of European solidarity. One of these “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, named after two widespread Chinese language nationalistic movies, has come to dominate China’s relations with Europe, and it has carried out a lot to alienate leaders and most of the people alike.
In response to a survey published last week by the European Council on Overseas Relations, solely 7 % of Europeans imagine that China is a helpful ally within the combat in opposition to the pandemic; 62 % view the nation in a unfavorable gentle.
“It’s very alienating, however they don’t appear to be eager to again down,” mentioned Lucrezia Poggetti, an analyst with the Mercator Institute of China Research in Berlin, citing controversies set off by blustery warnings delivered by Chinese ambassadors on Twitter. “If something, they’ve been doubling down.”
Steven Erlanger, Monika Pronczuk and Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed reporting from Brussels. Claire Fu contributed analysis in Beijing.
