The Secretary General of the European External Action Service, Stefano Sannino, and the US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman underlined on Thursday 2 December their willingness to strengthen their work on Chinese disinformation.
Noting “the harmful effects of disinformation on democratic societies”, they expressed “their readiness to deepen US-EU information sharing on disinformation sponsored or supported by China”, says the statement issued at the end of the second high-level meeting of the EU-US Dialogue on China in Washington.
More broadly, Ms Sherman and Mr Sannino stressed the importance of the EU and the US “maintaining continuous and close contacts on [their] respective approaches” to China. At the meeting, they reviewed the work of the six working groups launched since the first high-level meeting in May.
Ms Sherman and Mr Sannino discussed, among other things, China’s “worrying” actions in terms of violations of international law, including the situation in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, the South and East China Seas and the Taiwan Strait. They expressed a “shared interest” in further exchanges and cooperation, including in multilateral fora, on human rights issues in China.
The EU and US representatives also reaffirmed the importance of protecting and strengthening economic and technological resilience, diversifying and strengthening supply chains and combating economic coercion. In their view, close cooperation between the US and the EU is important to uphold the rules-based international order, including ensuring a level playing field for all countries.
The Deputy Secretary and the Secretary General also recognised the importance of diplomacy with China, “most notably where interests intersect and constructive cooperation is possible”.
The next high-level meeting is expected to take place in mid-2022. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)