The E.U. gets more realistic about China—and China gets more realistic about the EU

Once upon a time, or about two years ago, the European Union was full of optimism about China, and how it was becoming a “responsible stakeholder” in the world. Reports poured out of think-tanks with titles like “Can Europe and China shape the new world order?” Europe had a good chance of persuading China that its interests lay in co-operation over climate change, Africa or nuclear proliferation, it was said. And Europe was better placed than America: European co-operation was a model and, unlike America, Europe was not a strategic rival.

The mood is different now. Inside China, America and Europe several bubbles of optimism have burst at the same time. Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a London based think-tank, says he and others who felt China was about to embrace multilateralism were guilty of “wishful thinking”. A closed-door gathering of Chinese, American and European officials and analysts, known as the Stockholm China Forum, this week heard how China has been unhelpful over climate change, Iran’s nuclear programme (China is counselling patience, not sanctions), its currency (kept artificially cheap despite American and EU protests) and its cyber-attacks on Western corporate and public computer networks. Such attacks, many coming from China, have reached damaging levels of intensity, and are now “high on the radar” of leaders, it was reported.

In 2009 China jailed more dissidents, sacked reformist editors and executed a British citizen for drug smuggling, brushing aside British government appeals that he was mentally ill. China has bullied Barack Obama over arms sales to Taiwan and meeting the Dalai Lama. In private meetings with European envoys, Chinese officials have unveiled a hubristic new argument for lifting the arms embargo: unless it goes, in years from now Europe “will not be able to buy its arms from China”.

The coming year will pose some severe tests. It is in everyone’s interests to avoid a trade war. And European and American policymakers seem to understand what they share, and what China wants from the world, more clearly than before. But that is only a start.

For the complete report: Charlemagne: Europe and an inscrutable China | The Economist