Borrell To Outdo Pompeo for War on China

Aug. 30, 2020 (EIRNS)—The EU high representative for foreign policy, Spaniard Josep Borrell, is competing with Mike Pompeo to see who can be the most hysterical about China’s rise and demanding that it be stopped. China, he said in op-eds posted in both French and Spanish newspapers this weekend (clearly meant to counter Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s rather successful ongoing tour of Europe) declared China a “new empire” on a par with Russia, demanding that EU member states, rather than improving relations with China, should fall in line and “correct” economic imbalances with Beijing before it is “too late.”

South China Morning Post points out that this barrage also falls two weeks before President Xi Jinping is expected to attend a summit hosted by EU leaders to negotiate an EU-China trade and investment agreement.

Borrell’s rant in Le Journal du Dimanche: “Russia, China and Turkey share three common characteristics: they are sovereignists on the outside and authoritarian on the inside. After 30 years where the European vision seemed to gain ground, the sovereignist vision has regained the upper hand with these new empires.” (Note that Turkey is a NATO member, but not an EU member.) The unelected Eurocrat continued: “Unlike the principle of sovereignty which is based on the popular will, [their] sovereignty puts forward the sole sovereignty of the state, which is a completely different matter.”

Therefore, Borrell says, we must show our superior “power”: “But in order to be able to peacefully negotiate and settle conflicts [with] these new empires, built on values other than our own, we too must necessarily learn to speak what I have called the language of power.”

Evidence of China’s imperial view? The “Made in China 2025,” and the “China Dream,” which exposes China’s “ambition for leadership” over the rest of the world. In Política Exterior, Borrell wrote that there had been “a substantive change in the attitude of the current Chinese leaders” since the launch of Made in China 2025, which is the country’s plan to upgrade its high-tech industries. “The ‘China Dream’ proposed by President Xi would be the way to achieve this [Made in China 2025]. This ambition for leadership is the main difference from times past,” he said.

This technological progress in China must be stopped, he insisted, certainly making Pompeo proud: “Our relationship is excessively asymmetric for the current level of Chinese development,” he warned. “And that must be corrected. If we don’t do it now, in a few years it will be too late. Chinese products will continue to move up the value chain and our economic and technological dependence will increase.”

China is an “assertive,” “expansionist” and “authoritarian” country, he railed, whose “objective is the transformation of the international order towards a selective multilateral system with Chinese characteristics, in which economic and social rights are prioritized over political and civil rights.” Proof? He promotes Chinese ideals as a “community of shared destiny.”

China is also a military threat: “The arms sales embargo decreed against China since the Tiananmen events in 1989 is still in force, but China no longer depends on imports of military equipment,” he said. “It has developed an arms industry, especially naval and ballistics, of the first order and every year it increases its exports. Although the capabilities of the Chinese army are still far from those of the U.S., the distance is much closer than a few decades ago, and in some areas there are hardly any differences.”