FP “Xi doesn’t want to deal with Brussels. He wants to undermine Brussels.” - May 8, 2024

 

FP

“Xi doesn’t want to deal with Brussels. He wants to undermine Brussels.”

On Sunday, (May 5, 2024 ) Chinese President Xi Jinping began his first visit to Europe in five years. One can glean a sense of his motivations by examining the policies of the countries he has chosen to visit: France, Serbia, and Hungary. In each case, to varying degrees, there is significant daylight between the foreign-policy objectives of leaders in Brussels—the seat of the European Union—and those in Paris, Belgrade, and Budapest.

According to Evan Medeiros, a former senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, Xi’s plan is to “divide and conquer” Europe. “This trip by Xi Jinping is perhaps one of the most aggressive attempts on the part of the Chinese to actively foment disunity, both within the European Union and within NATO,” said Medeiros. “Xi doesn’t want to deal with Brussels. He wants to undermine Brussels. He’s doing what the Chinese have always done, which is to try and divide and conquer, to appeal to the leaders and to the bilateral relationships, to ignore and marginalize Brussels.”

Speaking on CNN last week, Matt Pottinger, a former top China official in the Trump administration, seemed to effectively call for a U.S. strategy that would lead to regime collapse in Beijing. “Pursuing regime change is an incredibly difficult thing to do. I don’t know how we would bring it about. It’s not clear to me why it’s immediately in our interest, given the fact that China is the second-largest economy in the world and we don’t know who would come after Xi,” said Medeiros. He added: “The United States, by pursuing that strategy, would lose all our partners and allies, none of whom are willing to run the risks or pay the costs associated with that highly confrontational approach.”