Something in the Way Xi Moves?, Daily Brief, May 7, 2024

Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting Europe this week, and as is too often the case with these high-level meetings, European leaders are strenuously avoiding the words “human rights” and “crimes against humanity.”

Yesterday, China’s leader held meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron, including a trilateral get-together with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

There was reportedly no mention of human rights anywhere. European leaders’ failure is as shocking as it is unsurprising.

It’s shocking because the human rights situation under Xi Jinping’s rule has been increasingly brutal. His government has committed crimes against humanity – including mass detention, forced labor, and cultural persecution – against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang province. It’s also erased Hong Kong’s freedoms. Thousands of critics across China are behind bars.

European leaders’ failure is also unsurprising because we’ve seen it so many times before. Just a few weeks ago German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was in Beijing, where he, too, neglected to mention China’s serious human rights violations.

As always, trade dominated EU-China discussions yesterday. There were spats over potential EU tariffs targeting China’s subsidies of electric vehicles and a Chinese threat to retaliate on things like French cognac.

Trade is important. No one denies that.

But something seems to happen to top EU leaders when they meet with their Chinese counterpart. It’s not that they’re afraid to bring up difficult issues. The trade matters they talked about yesterday were tense and tricky, as were discussions about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which they also raised.

But when it comes to China’s human rights violations, EU leaders somehow lose their tongues.

It’s as if EU leaders have forgotten their own power: that the EU is about one sixth of the global economy and that the interconnectedness of the Chinese and European economies – two of the three largest in the world – is not something Beijing would want to wreck on a whim.

Once again, EU leaders have behaved as if they are simply too scared to even say the words “human rights” or “crimes against humanity” in Xi’s presence.

Some leadership we’ve got here.