BRUSSELS — Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo will walk a tightrope when he visits China this week, wearing two hats: coordinating the EU’s policy agenda and leading his country.
In addition to heightened tensions over the EU’s trade deficit with China, Decroux’s visit comes just days before Taiwan’s presidential election, with President Xi Jinping calling Taiwan’s unification with China a “historical necessity.” interfered in the election.
Mr De Croo departs on a two-day state visit on Wednesday, 10 days after the country assumes the presidency of the Council of the European Union, the 27-nation bloc’s intergovernmental body. The visit comes at a difficult time for relations, with tensions rising over the first face-to-face summit between EU and Chinese leaders in four years in December.
China also launched a retaliatory trade investigation into EU alcohol exports last week, expressing dissatisfaction with an investigation launched by the European Commission last fall into subsidies for Chinese-made electric cars.
This presents a diplomatic minefield for Mr. de Croo, 48, who has run a bilingual seven-party coalition government.
“We must avoid at all costs a situation where Belgium’s position contradicts the European position,” said Tanguy Struyer, a professor of international relations at the University of California, Leuven, and an expert on EU-China relations.
“If Belgium takes a different position from the EU, it will clearly benefit China, and China will divide us again.”
Mr De Croo’s visit will culminate on Friday when he meets Mr Xi in Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province, in the Chinese president’s last public appearance before this weekend’s presidential election.
Security analysts have warned that a victory for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which Beijing considers pro-independence, could enrage Beijing and prompt a military response.
Meanwhile, back home, recent reports have exposed Chinese infiltration of Belgian politics in a scandal involving far-right politicians who were paid by Chinese spies to influence political decisions.
mood swings
The mood music will be very different from 2019, when a Belgian trade mission led by then-Foreign Minister Didier Lenders and Princess Astrid, accompanied by more than 300 business executives, explored business opportunities.
Then the pandemic hit, disrupting industry supply chains and changing perceptions of opportunities and risks in Europe and China’s trade relationship.
The economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus has not only increased the EU’s bilateral trade deficit with China to 400 billion euros in 2022, but also made the EU too dependent on Beijing in sensitive areas such as energy and green technology. I also noticed that there was. Provides power to electric vehicles.
The current hot topic in Brussels is how to “de-risk” economic relations between the EU and China. However, this is easier said than done and the EU faces difficult choices in continuing to trade with China while protecting its strategic interests. The new economic security strategy, announced last year by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is due to be published in late January.
Belgium has been slow to catch up with more hawkish EU countries on trade, compared with neighboring the Netherlands, which last year bowed to U.S. demands to limit exports to China by technology champion ASML, a major maker of chipmaking equipment. . Together with China.
Just last week, Flemish public transport company De Rijn came under fire for ordering new buses from China’s BYD rather than local manufacturer Van Hool. In the French-speaking Wallonia region, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s significant presence at Belgium’s largest cargo airport has also raised national security concerns.
“I’m a big fan of free trade, and trade with the rest of the world and trade with China is important, but I just want to see more of an element of reciprocity,” Decroo told POLITICO in late December. Ta.
“For me, I have no problem with the Chinese coming to take over something here, but I just want to be able to do that with them as well,” the Liberal prime minister said.
This time, the business delegation will be much smaller, with just 25 CEOs accompanying Mr de Croo on his visit to Beijing. During the visit, he and China’s Li Qiang are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding on green energy investments.
strategic reciprocity
Francesca Ghiretti, a senior analyst at the Adalga Institute, said it was “very strategic” to put reciprocity back on the agenda for relations with China. But she warned against losing sight of the progress made so far on economic security and falling into a trade dynamic of tit-for-tat.
Like the Netherlands, Belgium is still figuring out how to protect its strategic assets from Beijing’s grasp. The country is home to one of the world’s leading semiconductor research centers, Imec, which also has offices in China.
imec was recently forced to choose a side. The research center, which receives tens of millions of dollars in government subsidies each year, should focus on “primarily like-minded countries,” Flemish Economy Minister Joe Browns told POLITICO in November. .
This tip was quickly adopted. Imec CEO Luc van den Hove said in December that there were still projects with Chinese companies, but during a visit to the United States, where Imec recently opened a new office, they were “It will be phased out gradually,” he promised.
Pieter Haeck, Barbara Moens and Stuart Lau contributed reporting.