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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in Beijing July 6 for meetings with senior Chinese officials, two days after China abruptly canceled a July 10 summit with the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. Although there was no reason given for China’s cancellation, the EU has recently been promoting a strategy to reduce the bloc’s dependency on China for key technology.
Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan says the EU has a lot of issues with China’s policies on trade, human rights, and the war in Ukraine, so maybe there’s an upside to the summit not taking place at this time.
Excerpted from Peter’s July 6 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:
The news of the day is that the Chinese have canceled their upcoming summit with EU foreign minister Borrell. You all know I’m less than pessimistic about China’s leadership as of late, and this is just icing on the cake…we’ll talk about the cherry on top tomorrow.
As most countries have discovered over the past few years, reading China is incredibly difficult from the outside. The US got a pulse check on Xi and his government when Secretary Blinken visited a few weeks back. Unfortunately, the EU won’t be getting a behind-the-scenes look.
This summit was an attempt by the Europeans to rework their relationship with the Chinese, but Xi’s cult of personality makes navigating that conversation nearly impossible…especially with how many layers make up the European bureaucratic system.
Regardless of the EU’s goal with this summit, no meaningful conversation would be had. So given a choice between a wall of hostility or canceling the meeting…cancelation was probably the best option.
