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SPEAKING
FREELY
The making of a China-EU
world
By David Gosset
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
The president of the
European Union Commission, Jose Barroso, has just
completed a visit to China, which this year
celebrates the 30th anniversary of the
establishment of diplomatic relations with
Brussels.
Fifteen to 20 years from now the
EU, enlarged further eastwards, more integrated
and more independent, might prove to be the model
for the governance of macro-regions, paving the
way for a global political architecture that can
cope with technological, economic and business
globalization.
China 2020, a booming
platform, will be the link between Eastern
Eurasian sub-regions, Southeast Asia, South Asia,
Central Asia and Northeast Asia. With this
anticipation in mind, we now have to shape the
relationship between these two matrices of
civilization.
In the post-Cold-War world,
the relationship between Europe and China has
gained momentum. However, as the world
dramatically changed for a second time in a decade
in the fall of 2001, Beijing, a model for
developing countries (paving the way to poverty
reduction), and Brussels, a model for cooperation
between countries (paving the way to articulate
sovereignty and globalization), have to take
greater responsibilities to work as the main
architects of a cooperative Eurasia.
In
the post-September 11 world disorder, the EU and
China have to conceive a genuine strategy to act
as Eurasia's structuring poles, making them into
the pillars, with the US, of a stable world order.
To face the challenges of this "grand
chessboard", Brussels and Beijing have to agree on
a grand strategy. They have both the material and
cultural resources to become sources of stability
for our dangerous and volatile "global village".
Fundamentally, this will require a common
foreign and security policy reflecting a united
and independent Europe and conducted by a
far-sighted strategist. In a move whose
consequences in scope could be compared to Henry
Kissinger's "triangulation", which restructured
the strategic landscape, the EU would decide to
massively support China's economic development, to
invest in trans-continental infrastructure
projects - road, rail, energy, telecommunication,
water management, and to lift the arms embargo on
China.
With the handover of Hong Kong
(1997) and Macau (1999) , there are no more
substantial disputes between China and Europe. In
the process of globalization, trade is booming
between a more independent and assertive EU and an
opening China. Both Brussels and Beijing have
clarified their intentions in official documents.
Beijing made an historic move: China in October
2003 released its first-ever policy paper on the
EU.
However, we can list some
difficulties.
Not all plain sailing
Firstly, it has been difficult for the EU to
arrive at a single common policy towards China;
each member state has its own history with Asia,
and especially China, and some of them have
competing economic interests. Current issues can
also be a factor of divergence - on human rights,
for example, there are different sensitivities
among European countries.
Secondly,
different interpretations can be placed on China's
policy towards Europe. China's motives in
declaring its interest in developing relations
with Europe have evolved over time. Europe was
first a counterweight to the Soviet Union, and
then to the US. China repeats today that there is
no "European card" any more. As Deng Xiaoping
said, "I personally love to play bridge, but China
does not like to play political cards."
Thirdly, the booming trade between China
and the EU itself can be a point of friction. Even
if in a globalized economy bilateral deficits do
not mean so much per se, the Europeans complain
and will continue to complain about their
fast-growing trade deficit with China. The Chinese
for their part will complain about EU trade
barriers.
Fourthly, the highly complex
Taiwan issue could be a problem in Europe's
approach to China. There is a disproportion
between Beijing's concerns (China's reunification
being Beijing's top priority, second only to
modernization), and the EU members' lack of a
harmonized policy on such a crucial issue.
With these four points in mind it is
easier to formulate suggestions to facilitate and
deepen the relationship.
Firstly,
Europeans need a greater collective presence in
China. China should be a place, if not the
place, for Europe to act cohesively, rather than
as the sum of individual nation-states. Europeans
could learn from the success of the China-Europe
International Business School (CEIBS), which is
widely recognized in Shanghai. It would have been
impossible for a single EU member state, whatever
its relative weight within Europe, to have
achieved what the CEIBS did in 10 years. It is
interesting to note that in its historic paper on
the EU, China explicitly mentioned the CEIBS as a
project of the greatest importance.
Secondly, China needs to have greater
presence and visibility in Europe; it needs to
explain its views, its specific difficulties and
its achievements to Europeans.
Thirdly, to
guarantee a sustainable economic relationship
where frictions can always be overcome by
negotiation, both sides have to create the
conditions for genuine mutual understanding.
Forums, exchanges between academics, joint
projects in education, all would help to create a
more mature interaction. This year is Euro-Japan
people-to-people exchanges year. Brussels and
Beijing have to learn from this to create a
similar event between Europe and China.
Fourthly, Europe should work towards a
comprehensive China policy which incorporates the
encouragement of cooperation between China and
Taiwan. The European Commission repeats that it
adheres to the "one-China policy", but the EU is
in fact managing two bilateral policies. On the
Taiwan issue, while the US is a part of the
problem, the EU might be a part of the solution.
However, more than ever in the post-September 11
environment, the world needs more than a stable
Euro-China relationship.
At the end of the
20th century, the Soviet system's disintegration
was the main source of change in Eurasia. The USSR
stood not only as one of the two components of the
post-World War II bi-polar order, but it was also
the structuring political framework for a large
part of the Eurasian continent in Central Asia.
What we mean by Eurasia is the continental
landmass conventionally divided into Europe and
Asia.
The fall of the Soviet empire
produced instability in the Caucasus, in Central
Asia, the Eurasian Balkans, or uncertainty, in
Siberia. But it also resulted in an urgent call to
rethink and rebuild the general architecture of a
post-imperial Eurasia. While this reorganization
will have to be decided and engineered by the
people living on Eurasia, it should not be an
anti-American project. Beijing and Brussels have
at the two extremes of the mega-continent to be
the main architects of a cooperative Eurasia.
Their partnership has to be subordinated to this
global vision.
In Eurasia's far west, the
European Union has enlarged eastwards peacefully
and illustrates that economic solidarity can lead
to a workable transfer of sovereignty which, in
return, facilitates further economic integration
for the best interests of the majority. The EU, a
post-nation-state political experiment, shows a
way to manage globalization on the European scale.
In Eurasia's far east, an open China is
undergoing a "peaceful rise". Beijing made the
choice of joining the world community, and is
acting as a responsible rising power. This
responsibility is the very condition of its
continuous growth. China's economic development
shows a way to poverty alleviation, one of today's
major problems.
An enlarged Europe is
coming closer to an open China, while Russia is
creating the objective conditions to act as a
genuine and constructive bridge. In the 17th
century, German philosopher, physicist and
mathematician Gottfried Leibniz already saw the
potential complementarities between Europe, Russia
and China - Novissima Sinica, but today
growing interdependence on the Eurasian crescent
is a reality.
The attitude of Central
Eurasia's rising power, Kazakhstan, and of a
democratic Mongolia - whose intellectual and
political elite understands better than others
Eurasian dimensions - complete also the picture of
a Eurasian arc where a momentum for closer
cooperation is gathering.
It is within
that context that China and the EU have to act as
two structuring poles of a cooperative Eurasia.
While the EU is a model for cooperation between
countries, China is a model for developing
countries. They are potentially engines for
Eurasia's stability and development.
Fully
aware of this potential, a strongly united Europe
and a post-Maoist China should make refocused use
of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe (after Japan, Korea, Thailand and
Afghanistan, China should become a "partner for
cooperation"); the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (the EU should become at least an
observer); and the Asia-Europe Meeting (needs as
soon as possible to include Mongolia and
Kazakhstan).
Brussels and Beijing have to
show by their vision and concrete actions that
Eurasia has become genuinely post-imperial and
that under the driving force of their common
strategy they can become, with the US, pillars of
a stable world order.
Reflecting on the
relationship between Europe and China, it is
ultimately necessary to take a real measure of
their unique historical-philosophical contexts and
to use these "invisible" factors to ensure the
"visible" interactions.
China and Europe
are cradles of two civilizations stretching back
almost to the beginning of recorded time. They
have both entered a new phase of their respective
history, with China now in the post-Maoist phase
and the countries of Europe developing a closer
union among themselves. The two extremes of the
Eurasian continent have a unique opportunity to
find enough wisdom in their traditions to build a
meaningful relationship, the nature of which we
are free to choose ourselves as we are not
compelled by geographical necessity.
An
analogy can help to develop such a relationship.
We can think about China as the Far East's Europe,
and Europe as the Far West's China. If Europe gave
Western civilization most of its main features,
China brought to Asia some of its central values.
But like China's history (let's remember the
Chinese novel Three Kingdoms , "After
division, the empire must unite, after unification
the empire must divide"), Europe's history - since
the Roman Empire - has also alternated between
unification and division and, in this perspective,
both Europe and China are more than nation-states.
To draw an analogy between the two regions
does not mean that they are the same. We should
see the differences between us as something which
brings us closer. Why does Europe need to build a
politico-administrative body to meet its unique
common civilization? Why does China need to give
more space for the expression of its internal
diversity? How was it possible for Europe to
guarantee individual freedom within a distinctive
common set of values? How was it possible for
China to ensure a continuous reinterpretation of
its own tradition? The list cannot be exhaustive
here, but it offers a perspective on how
differences can be a source of synergy.
This work will lead us, Europeans and
Chinese, not only to construct a relationship for
ourselves, but also to build a meaningful
relationship within a concrete multipolar world.
There is something superior to the alternative
between divergence and convergence. Not to diverge
does not mean necessarily to converge. Westerners
have tried for centuries to change China, and it
will take some more intellectual effort to show
that real harmony - the most desirable interaction
between human beings or civilizations - is the art
of combining differences.
But China also
has to make the effort to avoid indulging in one
of its strong tendencies, that is the "Sinization"
of barbarians, the non-Chinese; the Middle Kingdom
can recover its centrality without falling into
the excess of imperialist behavior.
Let us
reflect on Confucius in his Analects: "The
gentleman is looking for harmony without
assimilation, the others are looking for
assimilation without harmony."
David
Gosset is director of Academia Sinica
Europaea.
(Copyright 2005 David
Gosset)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing. |
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