An essential global interlocutor. By highlighting trade between the EU and China in yesterday's column, I was aware of the partial and limited character of my approach. China is an essential interlocutor with Europe in all spheres and the European Commission designed strategy does not forget this. At a political level, China's role is fundamental in the nuclear weapons affairs involving North Korea and Iran. In an industrial context, Jacques Chirac has just declared that the choice China will make in building third generation nuclear plants is regarded by France as a crucial decision. It is also China that decided to buy new Airbuses when the European manufacturer was experiencing difficulties in launching its new models. If China should, at a monetary level, decide to one day release a significant part of the dollars that it has accumulated, the whole international monetary system will be shaken up. At a scientific level, Chinese participation in European projects (Galileo is just one example) is extremely important. In the energy arena, China has become a direct competitor for purchasing oil and gas in Africa and elsewhere.
At the same time, China is a key player in the indispensable and urgent action at a world level in environmental protection and safeguarding nature. Its race to catch up with the “western model” has led it to achieve in a few years what took the West centuries to achieve, particularly when the West is beginning to become aware of the need to modify its methods. Without China's cooperation, the Earth cannot be saved.
Dialogue between Europe and China obviously has to take into account all these elements. I would even say that if the Commission document is flawed, it is due to its over- timidity in affirming the vital nature of Euro-Chinese cooperation, without which goals to protect the Earth's future and subsequently the fate of humanity, would be doomed to failure. I remain, however, convinced of the significance of the trade issue because it is wound up with all the others for a whole raft of reasons I will be summarising.
1. Ecological threats. Certain studies and investigative reporting are beginning to denounce the scale of worsening air pollution in Chinese megalopolises that experienced accelerated and sometimes monstrous industrial development: Peking, Shanghai, Nanking etc. Several of these cities have more than 10 million inhabitants, some of them are close to having populations of 20 million. According to a recent World Bank document, 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are Chinese. In several cases, the authorities have advised against pursuing any physical activities in the open air! What does this have to do with trade? The answer lies in the fact that most industrial production (essential cause of pollution, with the explosion of urban automobile traffic) is destined for export. If importer countries subordinated their consumption to respect for international standards, pollution could be significantly reduced.
Unbridled industrialisation also has dramatic effects on water quality and the reduction of agricultural surface areas. Acid rain poisons fruit and vegetables of which China is the main exporter. Authorities at the highest levels recognise these difficulties and have taken initiatives to counter them but at a local level export prospects continue to guide behaviour and the policies implemented.
2. Counterfeit medicines and other deviations. Effects from pirating and counterfeiting go beyond the abusive imbalances in world trade; we could even say that these imbalances are secondary compared with the actual dramatic consequences. If we just link counterfeit products to perfumes, watches, women's handbags and other luxury products, we're going down the wrong road. Counterfeiting now involves medicines, food products, plane parts and parts for other machines and is jeopardising health and safety. Organised crime is pulling the strings, links with drug trafficking, and trafficking in human beings and money laundering are proven.
There is obviously no question of linking the Chinese authorities to affairs of this nature; on the contrary, they are collaborating in the fight against this scourge. What I simply want to say is that the EU has to fight these abuses with a vigour and a determination that has hitherto been unknown. The European Commission proposed a number of months ago to make prison sentences mandatory for those guilty of counterfeiting, instead of simple fines and the destruction (often just theoretical) of the false merchandise. Are procedures to approve this measure ongoing? What is the position of the European Parliament? In this lacklustre context, it is well worth pointing out that China is at the centre of the problem as most counterfeit products are Chinese in origin.
Methods for penetrating the European market are being perfected and modernised. Last week the Italian press provided a report on the discovery of an internet medicines traffic from China that contained active substances banned in Europe or subject to strict restrictions due to their toxicity. The person organising this trafficking was a Chinese citizen whose name has been published in several newspapers and who has now been arrested; 312 Asians were denounced; almost 50,000 “specialities” were seized and 105 Italian cities affected.
The notion of “fair competition” should also be taken into consideration. The Commission has a specialist service in charge of tackling counterfeiting; moreover, one of its senior officials indicated that he had been asked to not “put a brake on international trade”. As if the interests of big business should systematically prevail over those of citizens' health and safety and as if it were fair to not apply the same rules to imported products the EU imposes on its own producers for reasons of health and consumer safety or child protection!. If these rules are not applied to imported products, European producers will never be competitive.
We sometimes get the disagreeable impression that China does not share the same concept as Europe about its relations with other countries. At the same time as the discovery of the internet trafficking in Italy for buying medicines, the Belgian press denounced the affair of bogus students. Demands for authorisation to pursue some studies in European universities are multiplying and most of the certificates accompanying requests are legitimate. The problem is that if the certificate is authentic, the name of the holder is erased and replaced: the person going to Europe is not the real certificate holder and will never register at the university expecting him or her. The rector at the University of Liège, Bernard Rentier, declared that he had awarded 125 visas to Chinese applicants this year but only twenty of them registered, the others, once they set foot in Belgium, vanished into thin air. In Peking, Germany has set up the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), which checks applicants in China: some of them despite the certificate they possess, do not know a word of the language of the country they are going to study in, all the evidence would suggest that identities have been stolen. Austria and Belgium are involved in the activities of the DAAD.
It is obvious that cheats exist everywhere, in EU countries and anywhere else. What is shocking is the participation of official bodies in this deception.
3. The future of Africa and other poor counties. Chinese dynamism and the absence of any scruples in piracy and counterfeiting are leading to the elimination of African countries from the “rich markets” (Europe, USA, Canada etc). This movement is already taking place in areas where trade has been liberalised recently (textiles, certain agricultural products) and it will be massively speeded up if the results from the Doha Round conform with the most neo-liberal demands. China is staying in the shade at the Geneva negotiations, because it knows that it will automatically benefit from the results that Brazil and other countries from the Group of Twenty (with which some African countries are naively involved) manage to get. Then no poor countries will be able to compete with Chinese competitors.
The short-sightedness of European leaders and negotiators from poor countries is dumfounding. The most recent forecasts from the FAO announce a worsening in Africa's food deficit and the same in other poor countries, together with more need for food aid caused by the increasing number of droughts and famine. Faced with this situation, there is only one reasonable policy: directing poor countries to a return to traditional or innovative food production methods, towards the reconquest of their food self-sufficiency and maintaining agricultural production in countries that are by far the main food aid producers in the world, the EU and the US. Faced with these demands, what is the measure that the dominant interests are pursuing so ferociously? The total opening up of the European market to Brazil and China and other big agricultural countries, resulting in the destruction of farming in the EU (with consequences that are easy to predict for territorial balance in Europe and European civilisation) and the eradication of the mainstay of international food aid. All this for the benefit of big trade interests and a few multinationals! Is this reasonable? In any case, miniscule Europe (6% of the world population) will never be able to absorb everything that China and Brazil want to get it to swallow.
A conclusion in four lines. My conclusion will be brief. Global dialogue with China must cover all the areas mentioned above but it has to develop and deepen gradually. In this global context, the commercial and industrial dimension has an essential and immediate role to play. Not taking action or taking action too timidly will have dramatic consequences that will become irreversible.
(F.R.)