For China's European charm offensive to succeed, its Ukraine war stance must change: analysts
South China Morning Post
6 min read
When Foreign Minister Qin Gang hosted his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock in Beijing last month, he called for "calm and rationality" so that China and Germany could work together for a better world.
"Both the Chinese nation and the German nation are well-known for their calmness and rationality, and both have produced great sages and philosophers, like Lao Tzu and Confucius in China, and Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in Germany," Qin told a joint press conference with Baerbock.
"The two nations and the politicians and diplomats in both countries should show calmness and rationality ... so as to inject more confidence and impetus into the uncertain world," he had added.
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About two weeks after Baerbock's visit, Chinese President Xi Jinping held his first phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, raising hopes that Beijing would mediate dialogue between Moscow and Kyiv.
China's potential peacemaking role drew scrutiny this week when Qin travelled to Europe for a five-day visit to Germany, France and Norway.
But analysts said substantive policy changes on the Ukraine war would be needed if Beijing wanted to win over European capitals, Berlin in particular.
China has rolled out the red carpet for Europe in recent months, wooing its leaders to embrace "strategic autonomy" - Beijing's shorthand for less dependence on the US. And it has talked up its 12-point peace plan for the Ukraine war.
Xi personally hosted French President Emmanuel Macron in Guangzhou for more than four hours in early April. Qin, for his part, accompanied Baerbock on her visit to a German business in the northeastern city of Tianjin, and the pair then travelled to Beijing via high-speed train.
China also welcomed Jennifer Morgan, the German special envoy for international climate action, to Beijing last month to discuss cooperation on climate change, an issue close to the hearts of many Eurocrats.
While such personal touches are important, Beijing would need to do much more to repair its tattered image in Europe after a series of setbacks in recent years, analysts said.
The most significant action Beijing could take to change negative sentiment towards China would be to play an active role "to end the war" in Ukraine, said Ulrich Bruckner, professor of European studies at Stanford University in Berlin.
Respecting the territorial integrity of a sovereign state and urging Russia to end the war would amount to a "great contribution" to improve overall perceptions of China, Bruckner said. This would align with "exactly what a global leader is supposed to do, to not only preach multilateralism and the rule of law but also live up to it and make it work".
Beijing has resisted condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite pressure from Western countries and the UNvoting overwhelmingly for Moscow to immediately and unconditionally withdraw all its troops from the former Soviet state.
Kyiv has stated that a full Russian withdrawal would be a precondition for any peace talks.
Barbara Pongratz, an analyst at the Berlin-based think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies, or Merics, said European perceptions of China had soured in the past two to three years, with negative views in Germany reaching an all-time high.
A poll by the German public broadcaster ARD in March showed that trust among the German public about China had plummeted, with 83 per cent of those surveyed calling Beijing an untrustworthy partner.
Similarly, the Korber Foundation, a Hamburg -based non-profit organisation, said 66 per cent of Germans saw China's growing influence as negative in 2022, compared to 50 per cent in 2021 and only 30 per cent six years ago.
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, China has adopted "defensive public diplomacy more forcefully" in Germany and Europe, Pongratz said.
However, "the growth in unfavourable coverage of China shows that the strident diplomatic efforts to improve China's image in Germany have backfired".
Bruckner said several factors contributed to China's tarnished image, with concerns over human rights violations in Xinjiang and the clampdown in Hong Kong high on the list. Lately, China's ambivalent stance on the Ukraine war has fuelled the negative sentiment.
Public frustration and disappointment ensue when human rights and international law are violated, and "we don't hear anything from the Chinese", said Bruckner.
Asked what could improve Sino-German relations, he said: "It is very simple. Do good. And then all the infrastructure are the tools to communicate the doing."
By infrastructure, Bruckner referred to Beijing's efforts to cast China in a positive light through media and cultural outreach. This resembled the efforts carried out by the Confucius Institutes, a programme founded by the Chinese government to promote Chinese language and culture abroad.
During a stop in Germany earlier this week as part of his three-nation Europe tour, Qin visited a Confucius Institute in Berlin and urged it to contribute more to German-Chinese people-to-people exchanges.
Confucius Institutes, like this one in Munich, carry out Chinese cultural outreach efforts on behalf of Beijing. Photo: Handout alt=Confucius Institutes, like this one in Munich, carry out Chinese cultural outreach efforts on behalf of Beijing. Photo: Handout>
But China's fall from grace in the eyes of the German public in recent years has exacted a toll. In April, Leibniz University Hannover ended its formal ties with the local Confucius Institute, the sixth such partnership to end since 2020, a sharp decline from 19 such partnerships at one point.
"On all levels or all areas of society, the connections between China and Germany have been really damaged," said Christina Werum-Wang, executive director of the Confucius Institute in Frankfurt.
"And if there is no dialogue or exchange for three years, of course, this is not good for the relationship," she said, referring to China closing its borders during the coronavirus pandemic. Suspicions about the Confucius Institutes had existed for years, she noted, but "in the past two to three years, it has really got much worse".
Despite differences between China and Germany, it was critical for the two countries to maintain dialogue, Werum-Wang said, especially in difficult times.
She said one of the most important conduits for the bilateral relationship was Confucius Institutes offering tools and platforms for "ordinary people to meet and speak with each other, like for us to learn Chinese or for German and Chinese people to talk in each other's language".
In Germany, each Confucius Institute is run independently as a verein - German for non-profit organisations.
Benjamin Creutzfeldt, a sinology scholar and current managing director of the Confucius Institute in Leipzig, said the verein status meant every institute was run on its own and that such autonomy was often overlooked by media critical of Beijing.
"Everything associated with China is painted with a big brush," Creutzfeldt said. "No one is giving China the benefit of the doubt."
For most people visiting the Confucius institute, like Germans who work in China and elderly Leipzig residents, it is just a venue for tea-tasting, cultural shows like porcelain exhibitions and seminars about China, he said.
