China and Europe should jointly oppose a "new cold war", while deepening collaboration to promote common development and prosperity, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said in Oslo on the last day of his trip to Norway.
"The Cold War was a tragedy for mankind. A new cold war would only bring greater disaster - severely harming the interests of people in China and Europe as well as the rest of the world, and undermining multilateralism and global governance," Qin said at a joint press conference with his Norwegian counterpart Anniken Huitfeldt.
"The post-war international order must be safeguarded, and genuine multilateralism must be upheld," he added.
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Qin said both China and Europe should oppose economic decoupling - a call to shun Washington's policy towards Beijing that he has repeatedly made during his three-nation visit to Europe, with France and Germany being his earlier stops.
"China is Europe's partner in dealing with risk and challenges, and what China exports to Europe and the whole world is sureness rather than risk.
"Both China and Europe ... should jointly uphold the right direction of economic globalisation, strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination, explore cooperation potentials, properly address each other's major concerns, and jointly maintain the stability and smoothness of global industrial and supply chains," Qin told the press meet on Friday.
Qin's remarks came as European Union foreign ministers meeting in Sweden prepared to review the bloc's China policy, while relations with Beijing continued to be tested by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking in Stockholm on Friday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell reiterated the bloc's call for China to use its influence to end Russia's war in Ukraine, or their already strained relations would worsen.
Meanwhile, China trade ties are expected to be high on the agenda when leaders of the Group of Seven advanced economies - which includes the EU - hold a summit next week in Hiroshima.
G7 finance ministers and central bank chiefs meeting in Japan in the run-up to the summit pledged to build robust supply chains with developing nations by the end of the year, apparently with China in mind.
The group had discussed the need to reduce over-reliance on China, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner earlier told reporters in the city of Niigata, where the three-day meeting wrapped up on Saturday.
European officials - including EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen - have increasingly spoken about "de-risking" relations with the world's second-largest economy, rather than a total decoupling.
The EU recently proposed to blacklist several Chinese companies for supplying Russia with banned goods and technologies that have supported its war against Ukraine - including the so-called dual-use goods that can be used for both military and civilian purposes.
China would react "strictly and strongly" to any such penalties, Qin said earlier this week during his stop in Germany.
China does not "deliver any weapons to crisis nations or crisis regions", he had said, warning against disrupting what he called the "normal exchange between Chinese and Russian companies".
According to Beijing-based analyst Ding Yifan, China did not agree with Europe that the Ukraine crisis began with the Russian invasion, or that the war should have a significant role in China-Europe ties.
"There won't be any consensus on this. No consensus at all," said Ding, a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute think tank.
Ahead of the first anniversary of the invasion in February, China's UN ambassador Zhang Jun told the Security Council that the Ukraine crisis was "closely related" to Nato's eastward expansion, a position also taken by Moscow.
"China believes that it and Europe should not discuss the Ukraine issue but focus on their bilateral relationship," Ding said.
Human rights issues - particularly controversies around Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong - have been another key source of conflict between China and Europe.
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway said he had expressed concerns about human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong during his meeting with Qin on Friday.
During the press conference in Oslo, Qin said China and Europe should "respect and support different countries' development paths chosen by their people".
Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet-related matters were not human rights issues, but related to safeguarding China's sovereignty, security and development interests, the foreign minister said. Beijing was firmly opposed to external forces taking advantage of these issues to create instability in China, he added.
While Norway is not a EU member, it is a part of the European Economic Area - commonly known as the single market - in which countries cooperate in sectors such as education, environment and tourism, but not common EU trade, foreign or security policy.
The Prime Minister met Chinas Foreign Minister Qin Gang - https://t.co/a8yLLWjsJw @Statsmin_kontor @NorwayMFA https://t.co/bLkVIpNgwn
- Norway in China (@NorwayinChina) May 13, 2023
Beijing froze economic and diplomatic interactions with Oslo after the Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2010 awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to pro-democracy Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Trade talks resumed six years later, after both sides agreed to normalise relations in late 2016.
Qin on Friday said China and Norway had agreed to speed up bilateral exchanges, as well as enhance understanding and deepen friendship through people-to-people and cultural exchanges.
Qin's European tour showed China was taking the initiative to reach out, Ding at the Taihe Institute said. "But does China's being proactive mean a way out can be found? That's uncertain."
Roland Vogt, an associate professor of European studies at the University of Hong Kong, said Qin's trip signalled the start of serious re-engagement between Europe and China, while sending out the warning that sanctions on Chinese companies would have consequences.
But China and Europe were still laying the groundwork to restart engagement hampered by years of the Covid-19 pandemic, Vogt said, but noted that rising negative sentiment among the European public put at risk the pragmatism that had long underpinned mutual relations.
"I wouldn't expect any concrete results in the next two years on any front."
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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