French President Emmanuel Macron is calling on medium-sized powers to join forces and stand up to the US and China.
Europe being hostile towards China isn't exactly news though. It's the break up of the Atlantic alliance that's the real story.
Is Europe's hostility towards China not a function of US hegemony? Surely there's less reason to be hostile now.
In a sane world yes, but in reality there's a lot of racism and notions of white supremacy at play here.
It is more than "racism and notions of white supremacy", EU and China are both exporting and manufacturing powers. China recently moved into exporting the high value manufacturing products like cars which are a large part of the EUs economy making both blocks rivals.
The Chinese government is using state subsidies to tip the balance further in the favour of Chinese manufacturers. This is just one example from one industry, this pattern is repeated by China across the board. The government is well within its rights to do this but the EU is equally well within its rights to protect its own economy from a form of trade war. It is incredibly reductive to just play the racism card while ignoring the real issues.
EU is not really an export power in any meaningful sense. But even if that was true, you could make exact same argument with the US which directly competes with Europe on exports. Europeans have had absolutely no problem sticking their heads up American ass as far as possible.
Meanwhile, everybody is free to run their internal economy the way they see fit. The whole premise of free markets and capitalism was efficiency. It was supposed to naturally outcompete planned economies like China. If the model isn't actually working then Europe could acknowledge that and emulate what China is doing instead of whinging. Or accept that they have an inferior model of economic development.
Finally, the EU very obviously doesn't give a fuck about protecting its economy. If it did, it would've never allowed itself to become so dependent on energy imports from the US. The EU kept paying lip service to the idea of going green, but refused to invest into stuff like wind and solar because it came from China. Now the EU finds itself being bent over a barrel by Americans. And it's frankly well deserved.
There's the whole democracy thing.
do go on
In that China is one and Europe isn't, you mean?
Elaborate
It is an important distinction though, because standing up to US might imply leaning towards China. But standing up to US and China, implies a third option: Europe need to huddle up together.
Not really sure how that works in practice given that Europe isn't exactly self sufficient, especially in terms of energy.
I was only commenting on the semantic distinction of the two, not the viability of Europe superiority - though beating Murica these days can't be impossible.
He should ask the last group of countries that strove to be neutral between the USA and a second large power how well that worked for them.
“Our objective is not to be the vassals of two hegemonic powers,” he told students in Seoul. “We don’t want to depend on the dominance, let’s say on China, or we don’t want to be too much exposed to the unpredictability of the US.”
European countries, he said, have a shared agenda with places like Japan and South Korea on issues like international law, democracy, climate change and global health.
we don’t want to be too much exposed to the unpredictability of the US.”
The war with Iran was announced in 2001. The unpredictability of the US is that it took them so long.
US being at war is fairly predictable, tbh.
"and China." How is France's manufacturing infrastructure?
Don't underestimate L'oreal industries...
Finally someone says it.
Macron - a true american hero for saying out loud what most people think.
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