A donkey doesn’t hit the same stone twice.
(common dutch proverb meaning don’t be stupid by making the same mistake again, nobody wants to be dumber than a donkey)
No article in English yet but this is good news, sort of. After the Ukraine war exposed how much we (EU and NL to a lesser extend) depend on Russia, an evil state, it is time to really reevaluate our relationship with China. Our leading party suggested today to put China on a new list together with Russia and Iran, somewhat like the US‘ list of “countries of concern”, threats to our state. It effectively ends a long policy of what we call country neutrality and means we can focus on China and not have to check whether we should take the same measures for 190 other countries as well.
The whole idea of peace through trade, influence by being economic partners, isn’t working. Well, the influence is, for China. The annexing of Hong Kong, trying to hide facts about the coronavirus, war (border skirmishes) with India, Uyghur genocide, threats to Taiwan, the power grabbing from Xi, the police stations across the world, keeping their own markets closed for others, negative influence in our universities, and last but not least the constant attacks from spies and cyber vandals on our nation and allies. It has gone too far already. There’s not much debate actually, most of the opposition agrees that list needs to be established.
“[almost 3]
years ago, US President [orange loser] signed what he called a "historical trade deal" with China that committed China to purchase $200 billion of additional US exports before December 31, 2021. Today the only undisputed "historical" aspect of that agreement is its failure”.
Although an unusual unilateral day, it’s not like we’re alone in this matter, it’s just that the EU works slow, too slow and all members want to invent their own wheel out of worries for their own economy. The pandemic and climate change policies made that blatantly obvious again. Sometimes you got to walk ahead at your own pace and motivate the rest to catch up. If you’re thinking just a small country, we’re China’s second largest trading partner in the EU (after Germany). Our PM was close with Merkel, on a personal level too, always enjoyed their interactions. Still not sure what to make of Germany’s new guy in regards of his position on a German Europe vs a European Germany (a constant consideration over there) but after the gas reliance on Russia they’re waking up too.
The purchase could open up the possibility of Beijing politically instrumentalising part of Germany's -- and Europe's -- critical infrastructure.
www.euronews.com
But also Germany:
They (China) own many companies in Rotterdam and other harbors across the globe. Harbors used and expanded to ship in goods from China... such a self-own from the west.
The dependence of NL on China is much much larger than on Russia, and we’re going to reduce it while we still can. Economically not the best decision now, our parliament’s words will not go well in China nor for the next trade delegation, but we’d end up regretting not doing it. The reason this is ‘sort of‘ good news is that it really exposes the bad, there’s a limit to how much it can be reduced. Replacing gas and oil supply from Russia is as doable as I expected, but materials to create products everyone depends on in the 21st century, or moving back manufacturing, isn’t that easy. We can still strive towards a minimum. And get people to stop using tiktok.