EU cracks as Sweden condemns China and sides with US President Joe Biden

While the EU and China have concluded in principle negotiations on an investment deal, there is, however, one EU member who has moved in a different direction. The European Commission has said that China has committed to an unprecedented level of market access for EU investors, but Sweden, on the other hand, has followed UK’s steps and even raised concerns over Beijing’s human rights record. Sweden’s fight with China has escalated in recent years and led to a technology showdown after Stockholm booted out two Chinese companies - Huawei and ZTE - from core 5G infrastructure. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to join an EU-China leaders’ meeting in Brussels this year, which is another sign of growing links between the 27-nation bloc and Beijing. However, Sweden’s decision to call out Huawei as a security threat by name has made it an outlier among EU countries and brought it more in line with the US, which has clearly stated that it doesn’t trust Huawei and doesn’t think Washington allies should either. It is worth noting that Sweden’s Post and Telecom Authority had said that the influence of the Chinese state over the country’s private sector provides “strong incentives” for companies to act in accordance with the goals of the Chinese Communist Party’s national strategies. 

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When Sweden banned Huawei and ZTE from the 5G rollout, the officials had said that the Swedish Security Service judges that the Chinese state and security services can influence and exert pressure on Huawei. Moreover, Sweden’s travails are of wider interest to the EU because they touch on important questions which many countries in the continent face, namely where to draw the line between often lucrative commercial deals with China and concerns over China’s human rights record and its history of spying on Western nations. 

Biden urges to join forces against Chinese competition 

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has appeared to his European and Asian allies to join forces against the competition with China, calling it “economic abuse”. “Everyone must play by the same rules,” Biden said in a speech at a virtual Munich Security Conference. “We have to push back against the Chinese government’s abuses and coercion that undercut the foundations of the international economic system,” the US president said at the annual international meeting. Further, in his speech at the meeting, Biden, contrary to the former US President Trump’s abrasive ‘America First’ policy that alienated EU support, appealed for collaborative efforts to work on challenges like arms control, COVID-19, and global economic crisis posed by China. 

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