Recently, the appearance of Huawei's new mobile phone has aroused discussion, and its domestic chip has slapped the United States in the face. The United States wants to contain and sanction Chinese enterprises, but it backfires, but it promotes the independent innovation ability of Chinese enterprises.
At this time, the United States could not sit still and wanted to pull its allies to increase sanctions against China, but its allies were somewhat "disobedient". At the 2023 EU summit, EU countries voted on whether to impose sanctions on Chinese companies.
Most EU countries voted for it, hoping to follow in the footsteps of the United States in sanctioning China, but Germany firmly voted against. Why should Germany stand up to US pressure and firmly support China? On the issue of dealing with China, the US camp is gradually moving towards disintegration.
1. The European Union and the United States
The EU summit held at the end of June 2023, whose topics included the Russia-Ukraine conflict and China policy, became a hot topic of discussion in EU countries, which is directly related to the intensification of Sino-US confrontation in recent years. With the United States poised to contain China, where should the EU go?
In fact, the EU and the United States have long become a community of interests. After the end of World War II, the European countries, which had been devastated by the war, fully learned the lesson and put forward the idea of European unity. At that time, the world gradually became a bipolar pattern of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and these old capitalist countries in Europe stood in the camp of the United States and fought against the Soviet Union together.
The United States made a big profit in World War II, because it was far from the war at home, the domestic economy of the United States was not affected by the war, and after the war, the United States became the "big brother" of the capitalist world and sent "warmth" to European countries.
The "European Recovery Program" officially launched in 1947, also known as the Marshall Plan, the United States provided various forms of assistance including finance, technology, equipment and other forms of assistance to war-torn Western European countries, 90% of which were gifts, and only 10% were loans. The United States has spent about $13.15 billion to help Europe rebuild.
In just the past four years, the initial postwar poverty and hunger have been swept away, replaced by rapid economic growth in Western Europe and closer trade with Europe. After stabilizing the European economy, the United States duly proposed the creation of NATO, which in the name of countering the Soviet Union, and the United States was able to control the European defense system.
The European countries that rely on the United States economically and militarily naturally follow the lead of the United States. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the bipolar pattern was broken, and European countries also established the European Union, and began to make their own voices and propositions.
Britain, France, Germany and other countries cannot compete with the United States, but the European Union, which has gathered the power of many European countries, is an important member of the world pattern.
As the EU's power grew, America's attitude toward it also quietly changed. In fact, the United States also cooperates and excludes the capitalist countries of Western Europe, and when the interests of the United States are damaged, it will force the Western European countries to harm their own interests to serve the United States.
In the seventh and eighth years of the last century, due to the rapid economic take-off of Western Europe and Japan, the United States faced a huge trade deficit. To solve this problem, the United States hopes to increase the export competitiveness of its products by depreciating the dollar.
So the United States and Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom signed the "Plaza Accord" to induce the orderly depreciation of the dollar against the currencies of these countries by intervening in the foreign exchange market by the governments of the five countries.
After the signing of the Plaza Accord, the five countries began to sell a large number of dollars in the international foreign exchange market, causing the dollar to depreciate, and in less than three years, the dollar depreciated by 50% against the yen. Affected by the appreciation of the yen, Japan's export competitiveness was hit, in fact, Britain, France, Germany and other countries were also affected, but none of them suffered heavy losses.
In 1987, the five countries met again to review the impact of the Plaza Accord on the international economy, and found that despite the depreciation of the dollar, U.S. export trade had not increased, and the United States no longer forced other countries' currencies to appreciate, but to no avail.
After the European Union introduced the euro in the 90s, it intended to implement euro settlement in the international market, and Iraq, which was taught by the United States in the first Gulf War, immediately responded, saying that it did not need to use dollars to buy oil from Iraq, but also in euros.
This can poke at the sore spot of the United States, and whoever dares to shake the hegemony of the dollar, the United States will strike at it mercilessly. The Second Gulf War broke out, and Iraq was severely punished by the United States.
Many people jokingly say that where there is oil, there is the United States, in fact, the United States is not short of oil at all, it wants to maintain the system of oil trade settled in dollars, the European Union once wanted to challenge this system, but then failed. Seeing that the EU's energy trade with Russia is hot, the United States has stepped in again.
After the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the United States openly asked the EU to cut off energy trade with Russia, and the Nord Stream pipeline, a natural gas transmission pipeline between Russia and Germany, was also blown up by mysterious murderers, completely cutting off Europe's ideas, and European countries suddenly fell into an energy crisis.
If there are any complaints in the EU, of course there are. It's just that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is a war on the doorstep of the European Union, and the EU has to follow the United States to sanction Russia even if it pinches its nose, but when the United States asks the EU to sanction China, European countries are not happy.
China has no grievances with the EU in the near future, and China is also an important trading partner of the EU, and offending China is harmful to European countries. At this time, America's allies began to disobey.
Second, it cannot be decoupled from China
The 2023 EU Summer Summit was held in Brussels, and European Council President Michel said in an invitation letter to the leaders of participating countries that this is an opportunity to reaffirm the EU's unified position on China. NATO has become a tool for manipulation by the United States, and now the EU is also repeating the mistakes of NATO, and following the United States too much will only make the EU lose its independence.
In fact, many leaders in EU countries have expressed the view that Europe should be independent and cannot be decoupled from China, such as French President Emmanuel Macron, who has expressed similar views on many occasions. China's threat, after all, is for the United States, and the United States is afraid that China's rise will replace the status of the United States, but why should the EU go to this troubled water?
At this summit, China policy became the focus of discussion. It is not enough for the United States to sanction Chinese companies on itself, and it has pressured the EU to jointly launch sanctions against China. There is also a high-sounding reason for voting on sanctions against Chinese companies at the EU summit.
The EU said that these Chinese companies are suspected of exporting products to Russia, some of which can be used as parts and components of military weapons, which means that these Chinese companies are "supplying arms" to Russia. This far-fetched reason can convince the vast majority of EU member states, which shows the hypocrisy of European and American countries.
But among the many yes votes, there was one against from Germany. 26 countries agreed to sanction Chinese companies, but Germany objected. As the most powerful country in the EU, Germany's opposition made the EU difficult. Why should Germany oppose sanctions against China?
Although Germany is known as the locomotive of the European economy, it also needs China, the engine of the global economy, to drive. The German economy has fallen into recession in recent years, and Germany is the largest trading partner of nearly half of the EU countries. If the German economy struggles, there is a high probability that all EU member states will be dragged down.
The reason for Germany's economic decline is related to severe inflation. Germany's economy is very dependent on product exports, and the euro area, which is an important export market for Germany, also has relatively high inflation in the United States. In this economic downturn, Germany is more dependent on the Chinese market and naturally does not want relations with China to stalemate.
China has been Germany's largest trading partner in the world for the past seven years, and in the past global economic downturn, the Chinese market was almost the only profitable market for German giants such as the automotive and chemical industries. At the same time, Germany is also China's largest trading partner, the largest source of foreign investment and an important investment destination in Europe.
Although some German politicians follow the pace of the United States, clamoring for "decoupling from China" and reducing economic dependence on China, no one will live with money, German companies still like to do business with China, so the German government has to consider the consequences of offending China.
For German companies, they cannot do without China and do not want to leave it. According to an article in the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, around 1 million jobs in Germany depend on exports to China, and more than 5,000 German companies are active in China. More than 30% of the profits of German car companies such as Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz come from China.
With such close trade exchanges, how can Germany "decouple" from China? So while the rest of the EU is clamoring for sanctions against China, Germany is reluctant to do so.
China does not have a fundamental conflict of interest with the EU; on the contrary, China is an indispensable trading partner of the EU. With Germany taking the lead, some other countries in the EU have also begun to waver. China is no longer the poor and weak old China, nor is it the backward country blocked by the United States and Europe in the last century.
Today, China is deeply integrated into the global economy and occupies an important position in the global industrial chain. Even if the United States wants to contain China, it cannot afford to decouple from China, let alone these small European countries. After losing Russian energy, if the Chinese market and products made in China are lost, the economic crisis in Europe may be even more ferocious.
Not only is the EU in a dilemma, but even the United States has begun to make concessions to the mainland, not daring to really break out a conflict with the mainland. The global economy itself is that you have me and I have you. The United States ignores the interests of all countries for its own selfish interests, and I believe that more and more countries will understand that following the United States is a pawn that is "sacrificed".