Foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urges ‘coherent strategy’ towards Beijing’s ambitions.
The EU’s chief diplomat has warned that China will “take geopolitical advantage” of a Russian defeat in Ukraine and that Brussels needs to respond to Beijing’s global ambitions.
Josep Borrell, the bloc’s high representative for foreign policy, has urged member states to find a “coherent strategy” to deal with China that responds to both Beijing’s rising nationalism and a “hardening of the US-China competition”.
“The China issue is much more complex than the Russia issue,” Borrell wrote in a private letter to EU foreign ministers seen by the Financial Times. “China’s ambition is clearly to build a new world order with China in its centre . . . A Russian defeat in Ukraine will not derail China’s trajectory. China will manage to take geopolitical advantage of it,” he added.
The letter was pitched as a starting point for two days of discussions between EU foreign ministers starting on Friday to draft a new policy towards Beijing which EU leaders are set to discuss next month.