China’s Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi had a busy weekend at the expense of the anti-China forces in the European Union. He held separate meetings with the foreign ministers of EU countries, Poland, Ireland, Hungary, and with the foreign minister of Serbia. Although in the shadow of the European Parliament’s decision to break off negotiations with China over the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), the meetings, which all took place in Guiyang, were held in a very warm and friendly atmosphere. All four foreign ministers praised China’s development and thanked the country for its assistance dealing with the current COVID-19 pandemic. Wang identified trade, logistics, health care, technological innovation, energy and digital economy, the innovation-driven economy and creating new growth points in bilateral ties as areas of cooperation. All welcomed an expansion of Chinese investments.
Significantly all the three EU countries underlined the importance of the CAI and for negotiations to resume in an atmosphere of dialogue. The three members of the China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) — Serbia, Poland and Hungary — called for continuing to develop the organization of a platform for economic cooperation between China and its 16 members. Some other points of note include:
Wang in his meeting with the Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau May 29 proposed that the two countries explore the alignment of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) with Poland’s pandemic recovery program New Polish Order. The latter is designed to facilitate the use of Brussels’ structural funds. For his part Rau said Poland hopes to expand the export of agricultural products to China as well as the above-mentioned areas.
In his meeting with Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defense Simon Coveney on May 31 Wang emphasized that Ireland has enjoyed a trade surplus with China for the last decade while Coveny called for deepening cooperation with China in internet security, aviation, as well as on climate change and peacekeeping. In the same week, on May 28 and 29, the 7th China-Ireland Business Summit was held virtually in Ireland’s second largest city of Cork, drawing a number of officials, business leaders, experts and scholars from both sides. Speaking to that event, Martin Heydon, minister of state at the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, said, “My ambition is to cement and further develop that positive trade relation (with China) in the coming years ahead.”
