A power grab by Xi in China rattles europe

pulse

March 5, 2018 5:10 AM

BRUSSELS — A year ago, the self-styled global elite gathered at Davos, shaken by the election of Donald Trump, who made no secret of his contempt for the multilateral alliances and trade that underpin the European Union.

Then up stepped the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, promising that if the U.S. would no longer champion the global system, China would.

European officials and business leaders were thrilled.

But a year later, European leaders are confronted with the reality that Xi could also be a threat to the global system, rather than a great defender. The abolition of the two-term limit for the presidency, which could make Xi China’s ruler for life and which is expected to be ratified this week by China’s legislature, has punctured the hope that China would become “a responsible stakeholder” in the global order. Few still believe China is moving toward the Western values of democracy and rule of law.

Instead, many European leaders now accuse China of trying to divide the European Union as it woos Central Europe and the Balkan states with large investments. They are also wary of how China has become more aggressive militarily, in espionage and in its investment strategy abroad — with targets including its largest trading partner in Europe, Germany.

For decades the European Union has benefited from the global system created by the United States after World War II, as has China. Even as Russia under President Vladimir Putin has remained a revanchist power, China’s economic success has depended on stability and order.

But the prospect of Xi as ruler in perpetuity has scrambled the equation. Many European leaders distrust Trump, who says he sees them less as allies than as competitors. But if moving closer to China once seemed like a smart hedge, at least while Trump was in office, now Xi also presents a problem.

“We’re at an inflection point,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. “The Western world now understands that we have to take China’s push out into the world much more seriously than we have in the past.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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