China: EU Committee Report

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, the former Prime Minister of China, Zhou Enlai, is recorded as having replied to a question about the consequences of the French revolution with the lapidary statement, “Too soon to say”. One could well say the same of the direction and destination of the relationship between the EU and China.

The Chinese have a marked habit of taking the long view of their geopolitical relationships with other parts of the world. We Europeans have a tendency to take an excessively short-term view of such relationships. So it is very desirable, from time to time, to stand back a bit and look at the relationship between the EU and China in the round. I therefore congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my former colleagues on Sub-Committee C of the EU Select Committee, on providing us with this timely and thought-provoking report which provides an opportunity to do precisely that.

I shall, if I may, go back to the beginning of the EU-China relationship some 35 years ago last month, not just because I was present at the creation but because it contains some useful lessons for the present day. It also provides me with the opportunity to pay tribute to the former Leader of this House, Lord Soames, for whom I worked at the time in the European Commission and without whose skill and flair the entirely new relationship between the European Community and China that emerged following his visit to Beijing in May 1975 would not have developed so rapidly, so smoothly and so constructively.

The Europe from which we travelled then in 1975 was at that time in some considerable disarray. There was a leadership vacuum following the death of President Pompidou and the departure from office of Messrs Heath and Brandt. Europe’s economies were wracked by high inflation and high unemployment following the Yom Kippur war and the quadrupling of the oil price. China, too, was in turmoil with Zhou Enlai and Mao in their final days and the “gang of four” just around the corner. But that did not prevent the establishment of diplomatic relations being agreed and it did not prevent the foundations of the first EU-China trade agreement being made, both of which developments survived all the subsequent upheavals and blossomed into the much more elaborate and multifaceted set of relations described in the report that we are debating.

We should not be overly concerned if the short-term prospects for that relationship are currently not particularly brilliant, nor should we draw too drastic conclusions from Europe’s current leadership vacuum and the preoccupation with its internal problems, which is certainly leading to some expressions of frustration on the Chinese side and to a number of derogatory remarks about the waning importance of the relationship.

Why do I take the view that this relationship is so robust and durable, other than the elements of history that I have recounted and which rather demonstrate that? Basically, both sides have substantive and different reasons for ensuring that it remains. There is no parallel here at all for the EU’s rather fraught and unsatisfactory relationship with Russia. The Soviet Union, and now Russia, have consistently had as a guiding principle of their relations with the EU and its member states the policy of divide and rule. While the Chinese are not averse from time to time to playing off one member state against the other in an opportunistic way that is not the guiding principle of their attitude. Quite the contrary. From the very outset they have wanted to see a Europe working together and playing a more significant role in the world. They do so not out of any starry-eyed belief in European integration but because they see Europe as one of the constellations in a multipolar world which revolves around the middle kingdom—their picture of a desirable balance of power. They recognise that in the trade policy field, which matters a lot to them, Europe on the whole speaks with a single voice and acts as a single unit.

From the European perspective, which is a completely different one, effective multinationalism is one of the guiding principles of our common foreign and security policy. That means that we are working for an increasingly rules-based international community because it is in our interest, as well as that of many others, to do so. But we cannot have effective multilateralism without the active co-operation of China, with its veto on the UN Security Council, its membership of the G20, its leadership role among the G77 developing countries.

Getting China to co-operate in achieving effective multilateralism is, of course, no easy matter. There clearly are tensions in Chinese foreign policy between a trend towards nationalism and mercantilism on the one hand, and on the other a trend towards playing a full and responsible role in the search for global solutions to global problems. In joining the World Trade Organisation, and in accepting its fully rules-based approach to trade policy, the second trend has been clearly dominant. In dealings over Burma, Zimbabwe and Darfur, the first trend has so far prevailed. Over North Korea, the Chinese have sat on the fence but they may not be able to do so for much longer. However, one thing is very clear: we shall not achieve our objective from this relationship—the objective of effective multilateralism with the Chinese co-operating fully—if we do not make full use of the toolkit provided by the Lisbon treaty. I was glad to see that point brought out in the report we are debating, and today by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.

Should we be worried about the possible emergence of a G2, which is a kind of shorthand for a Sino-US directoire ruling the world, to which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred in his opening remarks? I do not myself believe so. For one thing, neither the US nor China seem to me to be prepared for or to want the kind of structured, systematic, all-purpose relationship that a G2 would imply. No doubt, from time to time these two countries will strike deals and that will affect us and many others. But we really should not fret that these two countries bulk so large in each other’s foreign policies. They have done so for 40 years now and they are going to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. That has not been, and should not be, seen as an obstacle for a healthy and expanding EU-China relationship.

I believe therefore that we should be relatively optimistic about the prospects for EU-China relations. On my analysis, we are working with the grain of the two parties’ fundamental interests. Whether we succeed in building successfully on that foundation depends every bit as much on us as it does on the Chinese. So far, we have not been terribly effective at doing so. But we cannot afford to give up, or to fall back on a network of bilateral links between China and individual member states which will never maximise our influence or successfully further the protection of our interests.