2023-06-28 07:47:09
97% of lithium used in the European Union comes from China, as well as 93% of the magnesium community or 80% of the solar panels that the bloc countries installed last year. These are just three examples of the European dependency on China to stock up on certain raw Materials y essential products for the development of their strategic industries. During the pandemic, the European Commission tried to quantify that dependency. It began by identifying 137 categories of products – all of them associated with vital sectors such as health, defense or the digital spectrum – that mostly arrive from outside its borders and whose imports it could not substitute with its current industrial capacities. He came to a revealing conclusion: more than half of the import value of these products comes from Chinaspecifically 52%.
This dependence is especially accentuated in everything related to calls rare earths, essential chemical elements for the manufacture of technological products and weapons, but also electric batteries and other basic components for the ecological transition, semiconductors y chips o active principles for the manufacture of many medicines. “There is more and more consensus in the EU about our United States dependency for the digital transition and from China for the ecological transition“, assures Miguel Otero, a researcher at the Elcano Institute. “And that, obviously, worries Brussels.”
The problems that derive from the foreign dependency became apparent during the pandemic and, more recently, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine which has forced Europe to diversify to forced marches his power supply. Both shocks served to accelerate the plans for strategic autonomy and economic security in the EU, also highly influenced by the growing distrust towards Chinaits main trading partner.
“Strategic autonomy is motivated by misgivings towards China, but not only,” says Luís Pinheiro, an economist at CaixaBank Research. “Brussels has come to identify China as a systemic rival. It seems that we are entering a block worldalthough it will be necessary to maintain the cooperation with Beijing in many areas”. Brussels has not yet entered the collision path sponsored by Washington, but it is gradually getting closer, as the idea that the risks outweigh the opportunities in the relationship with Beijing prevails. At the moment, official policy calls for “minimize risks, instead of decoupling” of the Asian giant, as expressed at the end of March by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, one of the greatest exponents of the hard line.
Diversity of criteria
But, as in so many other things, the European position towards Beijing is far from being homogeneous. “There is a very intense debate that transcends countries, ideologies and parties,” says Otero from the Elcano Institute. “On the one hand, those who think that China is a serious threat and dependency should be reduced; on the other, those who consider that they exaggerates concern for safety and believe that Europe should not be swept away by competition between the US and China“.
The hawks are slowly winning the battle. A group that, broadly speaking, would include the scandinavian countrieslos balts or some from the center of the continent such as Netherlands. “China is the biggest threat to Dutch economic security,” its intelligence services said in the spring. Everyone is very aware of what happened to Lithuania in 2021, when it allowed Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius. Beijing responded to the bullying by halting most of its imports from the Baltic country, a decision that the G7 came to describe as a act of “coercion”.
At the other extreme would be France of Emmanuel Macron, the leader who has most clearly defended the idea that the EU should not behave like “a vassal” of the US in its relationship with China to try to set itself up, instead, as a “third estate” with their own autonomy incipient cold war between the two superpowers. A few words that in the current climate of relaunched Atlanticism -as a result of the war in Ukraine- generated much more criticism than applause on both sides of the Atlantic.
Reduce interdependence with China
The truth is that, although Brussels has hardly yet entered into the dynamics of tariff war and sanctions flag-bearer from Washington, if at least an intention to reduce its interdependence with China, which is also the main market for European exports. For starters, the trade and investment agreement that both capitals closed at the end of 2020 has not been ratified by the European Parliament and is presumed dead. Parallel, Huawei has been largely banished from the sistemas 5G Europeans, although much Chinese technology persists in the so-called ‘periphery’ of telecommunications systems, according to a study by the consulting firm Strand Consult.
On the other hand, Italia has announced its intention to disassociate itself from the New Silk Road, the massive global infrastructure project financed by the Chinese government, after being the first European country to join the initiative. And perhaps more importantly, Brussels aspires to prohibit the relocation of indigenous companies to produce sensitive technology – from artificial intelligence to advanced microchips or supercomputers – in the territory of “systemic rivals”, as it made clear when presenting its economic security strategy this week.
As much as there is talk of strategic security and many advocate reducing Chinese dependency, there seems to be a consensus when it comes to concluding that the EU currently does not have the industrial capabilities to dispense with Chinese imports in many of its strategic sectors. “Right now it would be very difficult to reduce that dependency in the short term,” says Otero. “First of all we should discuss whether to produce certain things here. Human development is based on the division of labor and the competitive advantage it makes it possible for some to produce certain things better and cheaper. A return to autarky It would have a huge cost and would represent a spectacular involution”, he adds from the Elcano Institute.
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