Investment agreement with China: we reward Beijing’s repressive policies

Stand: 8:54 pm | Reading time: 3 minutes

2020 is the year the coronavirus struck humanity. A pandemic may not have been prevented, but the poor information policy of the communist regime in Beijing has contributed to governments around the world reacting to danger later and with less enthusiasm than would have been possible.

2020 was also the year that China severely harassed Australia economically after Canberra dared to point out Corona’s grievance.

2020 was the year that Chinese oppression gave the rest to Hong Kong’s democracy. 2020 was the year in which the Chinese army already practiced in front of television cameras with tanks for the street fighting that awaits them in the forced conquest of Taiwan.

2020 was the year when more and more gruesome details about the oppression of the Uighur minority became known.

And 2020, of all things, will likely be the year that China will be rewarded by the European Union at Christmas with a bilateral investment deal.

Negotiations are apparently close to completion and the federal government in particular wants the deal before the end of the year.

China does not see global economic integration as a win-win business

Negotiations were understandably started in 2014 – investment companies want legal certainty, a valuable asset, especially when the target country has a dubious understanding of the rule of law and is also a very important sales market.

Meanwhile, an opportunity to demonstrate unity was added as an argument: After China’s bad experience with China’s divide and rule strategy on the monstrous Silk Road project, you don’t want to be divided again.

Meanwhile, however, it has also become clear that no great power will grow with China, and that geopolitics and global economic integration are seen as a win-win business.

Rather, the West and its values ​​are in systemic competition with China that no longer existed after the Cold War.

With Joe Biden in the White House, there is a possibility that the United States and Europe will return to their community of values ​​and develop a new level of defense against China, especially economically.

Concluding something like a separate peace quickly before the handover in Washington, as the EU is doing now, weakens Europe’s negotiating position (the Chinese then got what they wanted from the EU).

And it sends the wrong signals in all directions: to the United States, you expose yourself as the insecure cantonist that you are. China can feel empowered.

And the potentates of all countries will know about intolerance if Europeans want to teach them lessons on human rights and good governance at the next opportunity.

This is exactly the main legacy of the current presidency, given the current situation. The German presidency.