European leaders need to wake up — the world has changed

The writer is editorial director and a columnist at Le Monde

When Xi Jinping came to Paris five years ago for a bilateral visit, Emmanuel Macron invited Angela Merkel, then the German chancellor, and Jean-Claude Juncker, then president of the European Commission, to join him for the talks. They met China’s strongman as a European team. Last week Macron hosted Xi again, but this time the only German at the table was Juncker’s successor, Ursula von der Leyen. Chancellor Olaf Scholz chose to stay away.

That was unfortunate. Scholz’s absence at the Elysée weakened the message on China’s “overcapacity” flooding European markets, conveyed to Xi with new determination by von der Leyen and France’s president. It also showed how difficult it is for some western leaders to grasp the profound changes brought about by Covid-19 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Until 2022, France and Germany had pursued the same complacent policy towards Russia. The lessons their leaders now draw from those mistakes, though, are different. 

Berlin’s immediate reaction to Moscow’s assault on Ukraine in February 2022, reflected in the chancellor’s bold “Zeitenwende” speech signalling a “new era”, was rightly commended. Germany had invested so much in its relationship with Russia that only a clean break, though painful, could be envisaged. Within a year, Germany got rid of its unhealthy dependence on Russian gas. A question arose: would the EU’s biggest economy follow the same logic in its relationship with China? 

Scholz’s record so far suggests otherwise. While the EU has hardened its stance on China, the chancellor has taken a go-it-alone approach, declining Macron’s suggestion of a joint visit to Beijing in 2022. Last month, he did not brief his colleagues at the European Council on his second trip to China when they met in Brussels the day after his return. He met with Xi for more than three hours but made few public statements, marked by a conciliatory tone.  

The notable absence of the ministers of foreign affairs and of the economy from the chancellor’s delegation, which included 12 representatives of major German companies, was a message in itself: the two ministers, both members of the Greens, are much more hawkish on China — and on Ukraine. This points to the political nature of the debate on China policy in Germany. As was the case for Russia, Scholz’s Social Democrats, or at least a leading strand of the party, seem stuck in a 20th-century vision of engagement through economic relations, a legacy of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. “Germany’s structural economic dependence on China is at the heart of this relationship”, notes Abigaël Vasselier, an expert at Merics, a Berlin-based think-tank on China. “Scholz led this visit as if Covid and the war in Ukraine had not happened, as if strategic dependence was not an issue”.  

This vision omits another structural change taking place in the global economy. In a report published just days before Scholz’s trip to China, Allianz, the German insurance company, warned that Germany and China were moving “from complementarity to substitution”, with some Chinese companies moving up the value chain and surpassing German businesses.

These are the kind of changes that Macron had in mind when, in his customary dramatic way, he proclaimed in a speech last month that the EU was in “mortal” danger. Like Scholz and Merkel, the French leader long held the belief that engaging with Vladimir Putin was the right recipe, until events forced him to face the reality. Today he says a more radical shift is needed, on all fronts. 

A tougher stance on China is easier for France, whose companies have a lighter presence there than Germany’s. But Macron’s attitude to both China and Russia, very much in line with the European Commission’s current views, stems from the same philosophy: the world has changed, mostly for the worse, and Europe needs to be much more forceful to counter those negative trends.

Included in such trends are two big powers, China and the United States, that “don’t respect the rules” of international trade any more. Macron preaches “strategic ambiguity” with Russia, raises the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine and promotes stronger European defence that could only be financed by Eurobonds. Europe must protect itself and think strategically.   

Most of this is anathema to Scholz and some other European leaders. There is room for debate on Macron’s ideas — while France is a nuclear power, it does not have Germany’s economic leverage. But clinging to an outdated paradigm will not impress Putin, Xi or Trump, freed from the yoke of the old international order.