To say relations between the European Union and China are going by a tough patch can be an understatement.
Regardless of a collection of diplomatic overtures to allay considerations, the hyperlinks between the 2 powers have turn into visibly strained, with suspicions and warnings voiced in public view.
“It’s clear that our relationships have turn into extra distant and harder in the previous few years,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Fee, mentioned in a speech final week, delivered forward of her journey to Beijing.
“We are able to count on to see a transparent push to make China much less depending on the world and the world extra depending on China.”
Von der Leyen’s speech, which Beijing criticised as incoherent and deceptive, supplied a blunt, and at occasions scathing, evaluation of the present state of EU-China relations, name-checking the Communist Celebration for selling an “various imaginative and prescient of the world order.”
The speech, nonetheless, shouldn’t be seen as an remoted episode of political frankness.
As an alternative, it needs to be put in a broader context, through which long-standing grievances are being exacerbated by new disagreements, most notably concerning Russia’s struggle in Ukraine and China’s self-declared mission as a impartial peace-broker.
However tensions run a lot deeper.
Watch the video above to find the principle friction factors in EU-China relations.
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