Lithuania was the only member of the European Union to openly support Parliament Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, said on Twitter that it had “opened the door to Taiwan much wider”. Credit… Janis Laisans/Reuters
BRUSSELS — Europe is increasingly wary of China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, repression in Hong Kong, widespread censorship and pervasive social control, not to mention technological advances, industrial espionage and aggressive rhetoric.
Europeans are also not very happy with the “no-holds-barred” partnership that China and Russia proclaimed shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
But Europe does not support Taiwan’s independence and recognizes Beijing as the seat of Chinese power.
And what is more important for the Europeans is to maintain open trade with China and its huge market, while joining Washington in trying to prevent any military aggression against Taiwan. No European country, however pro-democracy, has shown much willingness to go halfway around the world to help militarily defend Taiwan, as President Biden has sometimes vowed to do (before the White House corrected him).
So European leaders have been mostly silent on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan.
“This is not their fight, this is America’s fight, and the Biden administration has been clear over the last year and a half that the Indo-Pacific is its priority,” said Philippe Le Coret, a China scholar at Harvard University. “Taiwan was quite calm and most Europeans think the trip was a mistake,” raising tensions when “Europe itself is at war.”
If Europe is increasingly wary of new investment in China, Taiwan is seen as an American problem, as is the larger Pacific region, where Europe has few military assets.
“Continued US support for Taiwan has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with geopolitics and trust,” said Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador to both the United States and the United Nations.
The only country in the European Union that openly supported Ms. Pelosi’s visit was Lithuania. In a tweet, his foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said that now that “Speaker Pelosi has opened the door to Taiwan much wider, I’m sure that other defenders of freedom and democracy will come through very soon.”
Perhaps. But Lithuania and Beijing are in an ugly dispute over Taiwan; Vilnius allowed Taiwan’s new unofficial embassy to use the word Taiwan in its name, and Beijing retaliated with trade restrictions. Other European Union countries were upset that Lithuania, without consulting them, had created what they considered an unnecessary problem.
German Foreign Minister Analena Berbock has been an outspoken critic of China’s domestic policies and human rights abuses. Without endorsing Pelosi’s trip, Ms. Berbock warned China against escalating tensions with Taiwan.
“We do not accept when international law is violated and a powerful neighbor attacks its smaller neighbor in violation of international law – and that, of course, also applies to China,” she told news magazine Der Spiegel ahead of the visit. “In light of Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, it is important to make it clear that the international community does not condone such behavior.”
But Europeans – and German businessmen – know that China and the European Union are huge two-way trading partners.
Yet growing criticism of China has led to greater interest in Europe in the fate of Taiwan, which, like Ukraine, is another small democracy facing a nuclear-armed authoritarian state.
Last October, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu took a charm offensive in Europe, stopping in Brussels for informal meetings with European Union MPs. The European Parliament overwhelmingly backed a resolution calling for stronger ties with Taiwan, which it described as a “partner and democratic ally in the Indo-Pacific”.
Parliament then sent its first official delegation to visit the island, rejecting Beijing’s threats of retaliation and the imposition of sanctions on some prominent lawmakers.
But the parliament is largely powerless in foreign policy and does not speak for the European Commission, let alone the member states.
Britain, no longer a member of the European Union, has been more outspoken in its criticism of China than other European countries, and a visit by the House of Commons foreign affairs committee to Taiwan has long been in the cards.
Still, the British trip will come in November or December, after the Communist Party Congress. Before that, China’s leader Xi Jinping wants to project power to ensure he gets another term in office. Many analysts believe Ms. Pelosi’s selection angered Mr. Xi and prompted such a strong response.
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