Een
must-read in de South Morning China Post.
A sinking ship? Why the EU and China could be heading for a trade war
Waar eerst de pers nog meende toenadering te zien tussen Europa en China, laat dit verslag van een Europese conferentie over handel en economie met Chinese deelnemers een compleet ander beeld zien. Het artikel schetst een beeld van aan de ene kant de Europeanen die de Chinese aanvallen en hypocrisie compleet zat zijn, en waar een groeiende bereidheid is om met andere middelen dan woorden de klachten duidelijk te maken over de parasitaire handelsrelatie, gezien aan de andere kant de Chinese doofheid hardnekkig is.
Sparks flew in a Beijing conference room last week, as diplomats, officials
and experts from Europe and China clashed over their
deepening trade problems.
Chinese speakers were accused of dismissing Europe’s long-standing complaints
and ignoring the harsh economic reality of an increasingly
lopsided trading relationship.
EU diplomats were accused of “bullying”, while the bloc’s policies were
billed as “protectionist” efforts to decouple from China.
Wat de rest van het artikel zal duidelijk maken, is dat het scenario van de-escalatie aardig uit zicht is.
At the acrimonious event hosted by the European Union on Tuesday, the two
sides bickered not only over policy but also over who was at fault for
the broad deterioration in their ties. The blame game suggests that an
off-ramp in their rapid descent towards a trade war may be hard to find.
Met een Russisch aandoend staaltje van glasharde ontkenning van feiten bestond de Chinese delegatie het om godbetert de EU te beschuldigen van protectionisme. De
million dollar quote even in vetjes, want die geeft precies aan wat het probleem is.
On one fiery panel billed as “EU-China trade relations, partnership or
sinking ship?”, top European business figures and observers looked
exasperated as Chinese speakers disregarded their insistence that Europe
remained comparably open to Chinese goods.
“It is neither a sinking ship nor a partnership – it’s a 400-metre-long
giant container ship loaded with 24,000 containers going to Europe and
coming back almost empty,” said Jens Eskelund, president of the EU
Chamber of Commerce in China.
Uitstapje naar China
Het artikel zelf noemt het niet, maar het is belangrijk genoeg dat ik als achtergrond hieraan toevoeg dat
China zijn binnenlandse problemen exporteert. De Chinese interne markt is beroerd: het consumentenvertrouwen is laag, de werkeloosheid is gigantisch en zelfs de allerslimste jongeren met de hoogste opleidingsscores maken zich enorm zorgen over hun carrière. Hier een ooggetuige-verslag wat van veel kanten bevestigt wordt en wat ik als betrouwbaar beoordeel:
Having spent the past few weeks in Beijing giving talks and attending
meetings, here are some quick observations as I wait for my flight to
NYC to board:
1. The talk of the town has, of course, been the Xi-Trump meeting, but
no one (not even usually well informed elite circle insiders) seems to
know what it actually accomplished, other than a continuation of the
detente that’s been in place for the past several months. That’s about
as good an outcome as one could realistically expect, I suppose, but
clearly a real “grand bargain” is not in the cards anytime soon.
2. The Chinese economy seems to be in a steady state, neither improving
much nor visibly deteriorating like it was in 24-25. In that sense the
government’s stimulus policies have had a positive effect, but the vast
majority of industry people I talked to remain very pessimistic about
domestic profits and consumption. The dominant sentiment is that the
only way for major firms to generate profit growth is through direct
overseas expansion.
3. That said, technological advancement is of course very real and quite
impressive (although it’s not quite as visible in Beijing as it is in,
say, Shenzhen). One interesting and very pleasant side effect of the EV
revolution (paired with infrastructure investment) has been that
Beijing is now a bike-able city again, given the sharp reduction in
exhaust fumes on city streets and the expansion of bike lanes. Armed
with a new bike, I could almost explore the city like I used to back in
2000. Hugely nostalgic feeling.
4. Academia is, in general, in a pretty dour mood. STEM subjects and
the social sciences/humanities alike have seen very significant funding
reductions over the past 2 years, but the latter have of course gotten
the worst end of the deal. Political censorship also seems to be
visibly ramping up again, with the sheer scale of perceived “red lines”
snowballing to levels unprecedented since the early 1990s. As the
recent Yang Nianqun incident suggests, administrative regulation of
faculty members’ personal affairs has also expanded (i.e., consensual
extramarital relationships between adults who were not in a direct
teacher-student relationship would almost certainly have gone unpunished
as recently as 5 years ago).
5. In general, it’s hard not to notice the steady increase in government
presence in everyday life—in both positive and negative ways. The city
feels safer and cleaner than it ever has been, and yet the layers of
administrative review needed for just about any kind of professional
activity have clearly proliferated on a vast scale (made less painful by
the digitization of most government services and more uniform law
abidance, but still more onerous than it used to be despite all that).
6. The most alarming thing, I suppose, is that general optimism
(personal or socioeconomic) seems to be in particularly short supply
among the younger generations. This is obvious even among the most
intellectually gifted kids at Tsinghua and PKU, where the level of
career anxiety seems to be at a level that I have never encountered
before. Unsurprisingly, willingness to form families or plan ahead in
general at the personal level is very low.
All in all, it was, as always, a very informative couple of weeks. The
stay was also made much more pleasant by the fact that I managed to do
it before Beijing becomes brutally hot. I look forward to being back
more often in the near future.
We verkijken ons erop hoe de Chinese economie georganiseerd is. De industrieoutput is natuurlijk duizelingwekkend en maakt ons wellicht defaitistisch. Zoom je in, dan valt op dat het model ook star in het eigen nadeel is. Een interessant inkijkje (uitstapje op het uitstapje) is in dit artikel van te lezen wat gaat over een gezonder aantal werkuren voor de Chinees:
Dandan Zhang on why mandating fewer working hours in China may be premature -- PKU labor economist warns that cutting working hours without protecting income would leave workers even worse off.
Few ideas sound more sensible than giving overworked Chinese workers more rest. Surveys suggest that non-agricultural employees in China were averaging more than 50 hours a week in 2023, while fieldwork indicates that gig factory workers put in 10 to 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week.
Yet Dandan Zhang of Peking University argues that the issue is more complicated. For any workers, long hours are simply the price of earning enough. In that context, the more immediate concern is not leisure but income.
That, Zhang suggests, is the central dilemma. China is still at a stage where many households are building up savings and financial security, while firms face intense pressure to upgrade and remain competitive. If the state mandates shorter working hours without
protecting workers’ income or providing broader policy support, companies may respond by cutting jobs, outsourcing more work, or replacing labour with machines. Workers could end up with fewer hours, but also less income and less security.
In Zhang’s view, a better approach would be a combination of raising the minimum wage and improving fiscal and tax policies to steer a greater share of social wealth toward workers.
De conclusie kunnen we zelf wel denk ik trekken: een dergelijke focus op welvaar ondergraaft het export-voordeel van de Chinezen, hoewel ik vermoed dat in sommige sectoren de Chinezen zo'n marktmacht hebben dat zij vrij soeverein prijzen kunnen bepalen zonder dat op korte termijn de mythische onzichtbare hand van de economie de zaken stabiliseert. Aside, het sprookje van de onzichtbare hand dat als dogma op de middelbare school wordt gepredikt blijkt in de praktijk toch vooral de hand te zijn van degene die niet meedoen aan lassez-faire.
Ondertussen rapporteert
Bloomberg dat (met samenvatting Pettis)
- april 2026: industrie-output groeide 4,1%, behoorlijk onder de doelstellingen
- Against this, retail sales grew by a measly 1.9% year on year in the first four months of 2026, and by a shocking 0.2% in April
- Overall consumption growth is almost certainly a little higher, but it
is hard to explain such a large gap between production and consumption
except if more production is not resulting either in higher wages,
higher profits, or stable household confidence.
Met andere woorden, consistent verhaal dat binnenlandse consumentenbesteding zwaar achterloopt op de centraal aangezwengelde overproductie. Het lijkt erop dat de Chinese overheid geen weg ziet om naar een ander model over te schakelen.
Wat repercussies heeft voor het artikel wat we bespreken, dus terug naar het origineel.
Einde uitstapje naar China, terug naar de Europese conferentie
De problemen tussen de EU en China verergeren zich, met een whopping 17 procent stijging van vracht vanuit China in een jaar tijd.
Eskelund bit back, pointing out that 42 per cent of all shipping containers
coming into Europe were from China and that Chinese container shipments
to the bloc rose by 17 per cent last year.
“For once and for all we need to kill the myth of European protectionism,” he said.
And after EU ambassador to China Jorge Toledo said the “EU is being
attacked on all fronts by the Chinese press and government” over its
Industrial Accelerator Act – its first major full-blooded industrial
policy – a guest accused him of “a very vivid demonstration of
bullying”.
This, in turn, drew an angry rebuke from panellist and Spanish economist
Alicia Garcia-Herrero: “This is a meeting organised by the European
Union – you cannot talk about bullying to an ambassador of the EU.”
Er speelt iets op de achtergrond. De Chinezen zijn als de dood voor een Europese wet in de maak: de
Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA). Deze wet is een vriendelijk koekje van eigen deeg, ik heb de details even vetjes gemaakt.
As Europe’s bold industrial plans gather speed and China propagates
retaliatory threats, the fireworks in Beijing could be a preview of a
bigger trade clash to come.
The Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) would, if enacted, place stringent
conditions on Chinese companies investing in Europe’s hi-tech sectors,
forcing them to establish joint ventures with local companies, to hire
local employees, and to transfer technology to local partners.
Updated cybersecurity legislation, meanwhile, would squeeze Beijing’s access to markets from telecommunications and semiconductors to cloud computing and connected
vehicles.
Before its summer break, meanwhile, the European Commission is aiming to
secure a blessing from the bloc’s member states for a new and more
assertive approach on trade towards China.
A new
tool to tackle Chinese overcapacity is in the works, while the commission plans more frequent use of emergency safeguards to tackle surges in Chinese imports. On Thursday,
the Capitol Forum website reported that the next safeguard investigation
would be launched next month in the chemicals sector.
These efforts could result in quotas and tariffs on imports and have most
recently been used in the steel and ferroalloy sectors.
On each front, Beijing is threatening to retaliate in kind.
On Friday, it banned Chinese firms, including airport scanner-maker
Nuctech, from complying with the EU’s foreign subsidies regulation
investigations – a sign that it would fight tooth-and-nail against the
bloc’s assertive policies.
De EU schijnt al langer te proberen om China te overtuigen dat de wet geen anti-China instrument is.
Brussels has been at pains to convince Beijing that its plans are pro-Europe
rather than anti-China. In meetings with Chinese officials, they have
reminded them that their plans are not dissimilar to industrial plans
China has used for decades.
“If you look at the proposal of the IAA, it doesn’t go as far [as China has
gone] – it will not replicate but [will have some] similar
requirements,” Toledo told the conference. “That’s why this is not
protectionism, but a level playing field, and my question is: what did
you expect us to do?”
In his address, the EU’s top diplomat for Asia, Erik Kurzweil, insisted
that “the EU approach is not to decouple, but to de-risk, to mitigate
vulnerabilities while maintaining open channels for collaboration”.
“The EU needs to make sure that China’s drive towards a self-reliant
investment and export-driven industrial policy … does not come at the
expense of EU competitiveness, industrial growth and economic
stability,” he said.
Deze quote vind ik veelzeggend: "what did you expect us to do?”. Het haakt namelijk aan op het kennelijke onvermogen van de Chinese overheid om een ander model te hanteren dan wat men nu doet. Dat leidt tot binnenlandse problemen, maar het het is ook een model waarbij de Chinese overheid met oogkleppen op door de porseleinkast van andere landen raast. De Chinezen lijken ervan uit te gaan dat de klant dan alsnog terug komt voor nieuw Chinees porselein. Dat is de reden waarom China doodleuk een houding aanneemt van "jullie zijn prooi en waag het niet je te verzetten".
It epitomised the problem that EU officials complain about frequently:
they feel they are talking at cross purposes with their Chinese
interlocutors. There is a sense in EU capitals that the bloc has damaged
it credibility with its failure to fully execute on its threats to
close down its market to China if it does not open to Europe.
“Their eyes glaze over when we talk about our trade problems – they either
don’t care or simply don’t feel like they have to do anything about it,”
said one senior diplomat involved in China policy.
The sides came close to a trade war in 2024, when tensions soared over
Brussels’ probe into subsidies in China’s electric vehicle sector.
Public tensions cooled after the return of US President Donald Trump,
with both sides appearing to calm things down in the global upheaval
that followed.
Now, though, the gloves are off. Some observers say that a trade war – where
the EU makes good on threats to close its market down to Chinese
imports – may be the only thing to bring Beijing to the table.
Komende maanden gaan interessant worden. De verschillende deals die de EU heeft gesloten afgelopen maanden met landen als India zijn wellicht ook een wapen om de Chinese overheid middelen van afpersing uit handen te slaan.
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At your service, lang verhaal maar niet kort. Omdat de talkshows weigeren u te informeren doen we het werk maar zelf.
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). Maar omdat de auto economie in Europa zo'n factor is en ook in een crash zit, lijkt het me geopolitiek gesproken goed nieuws, al zal het ons niet helpen, behalve dan aan wss nog scherper geprijsde Chinese EVs.:strip_icc():strip_exif()/u/193387/crop5e179052b5ea7_cropped.jpeg?f=community)
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