- Articles
- Hits: 463
Polish President Andrzej Duda paid a visit to China on June 22-26, 2024. It was the first visit of the head of the EU member state to China after Putin's "resonant" visit to Beijing. Such diplomatic activity clearly highlights the Chinese strategy towards the European Union and the region, of which Poland claims to be the leader. Only in the first half of this year, China hosted French President E. Macron and German Chancellor O. Scholz. After all, Duda's visit coincides with the end of the stay in Beijing of the Minister of Economy of Germany, Robert Habeck, who, according to the German press, "made the last attempts to prevent a trade war between the EU and the People's Republic of China." We will remind that in the spring of 2024, Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited France, Hungary and Serbia. Thus, China is trying to ignore the European Union as a subject of international relations and develop bilateral interaction mainly with the member states of the European Union. In 2017-2020, the administration of the then US President D. Trump followed a similar strategy regarding the European Union. As his successor, Joseph Biden, effectively continued the trade war with China, Beijing is trying to weaken Euro-Atlantic unity. This is especially noticeable after the EU announced its readiness to introduce additional customs duties on Chinese-made electric cars.
Under these circumstances, in fact, Serbia and Hungary have become fulcrums of Chinese influence in the Three Seas region (Baltic, Adriatic, Black Sea). Poland is seen in Beijing as a deterrent to Russian ambitions, especially after Putin's attempts to establish a "strategic partnership" with North Korea. It is an open question to what extent this partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang is sanctioned by Beijing. On the one hand, it is beneficial for China to use North Korea as a source of arms supply to the Kremlin, because Pyongyang is not used to sanctions. And China thus fights with other barbarians with the hands of some barbarians. On the other hand, Beijing needs to be careful in this case, because Kim Jong Un is raising the stakes too much in the confrontation with South Korea, where American troops are stationed. A new Korean war is of no use to China now, because it will inevitably disrupt its maritime trade communications.
Instead, Russia's war against Ukraine objectively diverts the West's attention from China and brings confusion to European and Euro-Atlantic affairs. In addition, Poland is considered in Beijing as an additional factor influencing the position of Germany and France, in particular, through the mechanisms of the Weimar Triangle. China successfully uses the strategy of "divide and rule", playing on the selfish desire of European states to connect Chinese investments and solve their issues with Beijing autonomously, and not within the framework of the common foreign policy of the European Union. This gives China the opportunity to demonstrate to the countries of the Global South its "great opportunities" to influence the European Union in general and its individual member states in particular. It is critical for China to circumvent EU sanctions by developing bilateral relations with its member countries, thus sowing discord in the EU.
In this way, Beijing hopes to intercept in the West, in particular, the initiative to organize another "peace summit" together with Saudi Arabia, which should actually not stop the Russian-Ukrainian war, but continue it until China solves its own strategic task - to sow the seeds of conflicts between the USA and the European Union. The prerequisites for this are gradually forming: firstly, in the new composition of the European Parliament, it will be difficult to reconcile the supranational interests of the EU with the national interests of the EU member states, and secondly, the presidential election campaign in the USA forces Washington to act tactically, not strategically. The imminent acute phase of domestic political conflict in the US after the November 5, 2024 election effectively leaves China in charge of a "global chaos" project in which Chinese investors will reap profits while watching the barbarian struggle around the Celestial Empire.