On November 17, 2024, the "South China Morning Post" disclosed an incident. The EU gave clear instructions to those officials who want to deal with the Chinese. They must pay attention to their words and use gentle words to avoid irritating China.
The direction of the wind is turning a bit fast, but behind it is actually the awakening after suffering enough.
European Commission President Von der Leyen has experienced firsthand what it means to "shoot oneself in the foot." Just in 2024, in order to protect the local automobile industry, the European Union unilaterally launched a countervailing investigation into China's electric vehicles without any complaints from companies.
This matter was not done in an honest manner. The investigation process was hidden and the Chinese car companies with the largest export volume were deliberately excluded in order to calculate an absurdly high tax rate.
I thought I could choke the neck of Chinese car companies, but I didn't expect that the other party's backhand hit the EU directly where it hurts. China has announced that it will impose additional tariffs on EU pork and wine, and has also suspended negotiations on mutual recognition of new energy vehicle standards.
At this time, the German Automobile Industry Association was the first to be unable to sit still, and was so anxious that it p
On November 17, 2024, the "South China Morning Post" disclosed an incident. The EU gave clear instructions to those officials who want to deal with the Chinese. They must pay attention to their words and use gentle words to avoid irritating China.
The direction of the wind is turning a bit fast, but behind it is actually the awakening after suffering enough.
European Commission President Von der Leyen has experienced firsthand what it means to "shoot oneself in the foot." Just in 2024, in order to protect the local automobile industry, the European Union unilaterally launched a countervailing investigation into China's electric vehicles without any complaints from companies.
This matter was not done in an honest manner. The investigation process was hidden and the Chinese car companies with the largest export volume were deliberately excluded in order to calculate an absurdly high tax rate.
I thought I could choke the neck of Chinese car companies, but I didn't expect that the other party's backhand hit the EU directly where it hurts. China has announced that it will impose additional tariffs on EU pork and wine, and has also suspended negotiations on mutual recognition of new energy vehicle standards.
At this time, the German Automobile Industry Association was the first to be unable to sit still, and was so anxious that it publicly announced that if this confrontation continued, the EU would lose 300,000 jobs. Giants such as Volkswagen and BMW derive more than 40% of their profits from the Chinese market. As soon as the news came out, their stock prices fell.
What's even worse is that the production lines of EU car companies are almost being choked. 35% of the components on their production line have to be imported from China. As trade friction escalates, many factories may shut down at any time due to lack of parts.
The automobile industry is just a microcosm. The EU's ambitious new energy transformation plan is also inseparable from China.
The EU relies on China to supply 90% of the rare earths used in wind turbines and new energy batteries. They also tried to engage in "rare earth independence" on their own, but after a long time they found that the cost was three times more expensive than buying it from China, and it was impossible to do it at all.
There is also the photovoltaic industry. Chinese companies have participated in 17 offshore wind power projects in the EU. If China withdraws its investment, the EU's vowed carbon neutrality goal will be delayed by at least eight years.
There are holes everywhere in the economy, and von der Leyen's own political status is also shaky. In July 2024, 74 members of the European Parliament jointly launched a motion of no confidence against her, accusing her of engaging in "black box operations" in vaccine procurement.
At this juncture, she urgently needed to produce some tangible political achievements to stabilize the situation. Polls show that more than 60% of the EU people support strengthening cooperation with China, not to mention the voices of the business community. If we continue to carry on like this, let alone re-election, whether we can secure our seat is a question.
In fact, this kind of script where the "tough guy" route doesn't work has been played out in Asia a long time ago, with the protagonist being Japan's Takaichi Sanae.
Sanae Takaichi was a well-known "China hawk" in the Japanese political arena. He used "China threat" as his mantra, jumped higher than anyone else on the Taiwan issue, and encouraged the government to join the United States in launching a chip blockade. She probably feels that as long as her voice is loud enough, she can gain political capital.
But she failed to make a clear calculation. The Chinese and Japanese economies have long been tied together, and both prosper and suffer.
As soon as her tough stance came into effect, Japanese companies began to suffer. Toyota's new energy vehicle plant in China, which has just started production, immediately faces the risk of parts supply cuts. More than 60% of the market for Sony's image sensors is in China. As soon as Chinese companies began to promote domestic substitution, Sony's quarterly profits plummeted by 30%.
The worst thing is Japan's agricultural products. Due to the issue of nuclear contaminated water discharge, China has strengthened inspection and quarantine of Japanese aquatic products. This was originally a technical issue. Takaichi Sanae did not help solve the problem. Instead, he criticized China and said that China was imposing "trade barriers."
As one can imagine, Japan's exports of scallops and rice to China suddenly dropped by 80%. Fishermen in Hokkaido held banners and took to the streets every day to protest, scolding her for "standing and talking without back pain."
Financially, he lost his wife and soldiers, but politically he did not gain any advantage. Her approach has made Japan increasingly isolated in the Asia-Pacific region. All cooperative projects that had been well negotiated under the RCEP framework have been stopped. Even ASEAN countries are afraid of being involved and have begun to deliberately alienate Japan.
Finally, when it came to the internal election of the Liberal Democratic Party, she, who was originally very popular, did not even get into the top three votes due to strong opposition from the business community and the public, and she completely gave up the idea of becoming prime minister. What the Japanese media said is true, Sanae Takaichi was tripped up by her own toughness.
With Takaichi Sanae's lesson learned from the past, no matter how slow the EU is, it should understand that playing bad guy won't work.
That's why the internal instructions were so specific. The document clearly requires that officials should no longer use irritating terms such as "overcapacity" and "market distortion" at the negotiation table.
Instead, there are more palatable expressions such as "joint discussion" and "seeking balance".
Even human rights issues, which were always brought up by the EU in the past, were clearly instructed not to mention them proactively this time. The top priority is to stabilize areas where we can reach agreement, such as economy, trade and climate.
