EU and China: Experts call for the investment agreement to be stopped

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Video summit with China's President Xi, EU Council President Michel, Chancellor Merkel, President Macron and EU Commission chief von der Leyen (photo from December 30, 2020): Long-term negotiations

Photo: JOHANNA GERON / REUTERS

It is a broad front that has come together in the past few days: More than a hundred renowned China experts, researchers and human rights activists from all over the world want to overturn the investment agreement between the European Union (EU) and China, at least temporarily. 

“Despite evidence of ethnic cleansing, forced labor and other gross human rights violations, the leadership of the European institutions has chosen to sign an agreement that does not require meaningful commitments from the Chinese government to guarantee an end to crimes against humanity or slavery «, Says an open letter to the institutions of the EU, which SPIEGEL has received in advance.

On December 30, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the successful conclusion of seven years of negotiations with the People's Republic of China.

"Today's agreement is an important milestone in our relations with China and for our value-based trade agenda," said the CDU politician. 

Among other things, the agreement aims to improve access to the Chinese market for European companies and ensure fairer competitive conditions.

The agreement has not yet entered into force and has yet to be ratified by the European Parliament.

The signatories of the open letter want to prevent that.

The agreement "is based on a naive assumption about the character of the Chinese Communist Party," and "it further cements Europe's existing strategic dependence on China and contradicts fundamental European values," the critics said.

The current dependency of Europe is already "alarming," it continues.

According to this, Chinese state-owned companies took the opportunity after the financial crisis in 2008 and bought "a considerable amount of important European infrastructure".

"Illusory to imagine that China will keep its promises on these investment and trade issues"

The arguments of the proponents of the latest investment agreement, according to which China is demanding clear concessions in the area of ​​labor rights, are firmly rejected by the authors of the open letter.

These are "so vague that they are essentially useless". 

"Furthermore, it is illusory to imagine that China will keep its promises on these questions of investment and trade if it has broken its promises so regularly over the past few years." Examples are the suppression of the democracy movement in Hong Kong, forced labor camps for the Muslim Uyghurs, Beijing’s recent sanctions against Australia and the saber rattling against Taiwan.

The signatories include researchers from the London School of Economics and Princeton University, Dolkun Isa, who lives in Germany, President of the Uyghur World Congress, former Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata and Professor Harriet Evans from the University of Westminister in Great Britain , who is an expert on gender and human rights issues in China. 

The signatories call on the European Union to "withdraw immediately from the comprehensive investment agreement between China and the European Union" and to put further negotiations on hold until the human rights situation has significantly and demonstrably improved.

Andreas Fulda, co-initiator of the letter and Senior Fellow at the Asian Research Institute at Nottingham University, says: "The European Commission acts as if you can separate politics and business, which is impossible in the case of China." 

The China expert Mareike Ohlberg, Senior Fellow in the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund, also accuses Brussels of a lack of awareness of reality: “We are trying to sell the agreement as a success.

This reveals a lack of understanding of China's reliability as a contractual partner «. 

Jakub Janda, Director of the European Values ​​Center from Prague, sees Europe's sovereignty in jeopardy and also criticizes the German role during the negotiations: »Germany pushed the agreement forward within the EU and is thus placing the egoistic greed of certain corporations above the geopolitical security of Europe. «

The EU Commission expects the investment agreement to be finalized in early 2022.

The exact wording should be presented soon.

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