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Ukraine war: EU's next top envoy says China must pay 'higher cost' for backing Russia
South China Morning Post
5 min read
China needs to pay a "higher cost" for its support for Russia's war on Ukraine, the European Union's likely next top diplomat said during a confirmation hearing in Brussels on Tuesday.
"Without China's support to Russia, Russia would not be able to continue its war with the same force. China needs to also feel a higher cost," Kaja Kallas, the former prime minister of Estonia, said in a three-hour hearing at the European Parliament.
Kallas is on track to succeed Josep Borrell as the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, and during her opening statement and in response to dozens of lawmakers' questions, she positioned herself as an aggressive one.
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Asked what Europe should do about the growing cooperation between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, Kallas said:
"What we see more globally is the increasing cooperation between the players like Russia, North Korea, Iran, more covertly, China ... we have to be very clear that it has consequences ... [on] China's support for Russia, for example, we should signal to China that it has a higher cost for them."
"I see China and Russia weaponising interdependencies and exploiting the openness of our societies against us," she added.
Kallas echoed the rhetoric used by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over the past three years, who has steered the bloc in a more assertive direction on China policy.
"China has changed over the past few years. It is now more a competitor and a systemic rival - our dependencies towards China in key sectors are our vulnerability. We need to de-risk," Kallas said.
When asked if the EU needed a new China strategy, though, she did not answer directly.
Kallas is expected to sail through a vote of MEPs and to take her seat at the head of the EU's external action service - its de facto foreign office.
While the high representative does not set policy, the office sets agendas for monthly foreign ministers' meetings and represents the bloc around the world.
Kallas will inherit the position at a tricky time. The Israel-Hamas conflict has exposed Europe's divisions and inertia on matters in the Middle East. Moreover, the war in Ukraine continues to rage, draining the bloc's coffers and straining its fragile unity.
Soon, the EU could also be on the hook for funding Kyiv's war efforts, with US President-elect Donald Trump vowing on the campaign trail to pare back Washington's support and claiming he could reach a peace deal before he even takes office in January.
Kallas was asked repeatedly how she would keep Trump engaged in what is seen as a European conflict as he and the US look to pivot to Asia. On four occasions, she used a variation of the same line.
"If the United States is worried about what happens in the South China Sea, they should be most worried about how we react to Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine," she said on one occasion.
"If we look to the history, then isolationism has never worked well for America ... If America is worried about China, they should first be worried about Russia, and we will have these dialogues with the United States," she said at another point.
Throughout, Kallas insisted that if Russia was allowed to defeat Ukraine, then it would encourage other powers to launch wars.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin during welcoming ceremonies at the Brics summit in Kazan, Russia, on October 23. Photo: Sergey Bobylev/brics-russia2024.ru/dpa alt=Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin during welcoming ceremonies at the Brics summit in Kazan, Russia, on October 23. Photo: Sergey Bobylev/brics-russia2024.ru/dpa>
"We want sustainable peace, because if we just give in to the aggressor and say 'OK, take what you want,' then all aggressors, or would-be aggressors, all across the world, get the note: 'OK, this pays off,'" she said.
"You go for your neighbours' territories, you kill some people, your own people, then you walk away with more than you had before.
"That's why we say we have to support Ukraine ... if aggression pays off somewhere, it serves as an invitation to use it elsewhere," Kallas added.
The former Estonian leader, who soared to global prominence as one of Ukraine's strongest European backers following the Russian invasion in 2022, gave few details about how she expected to increase costs for Beijing. Across the board, her answers were light on detail, heavy on slogans.
Kallas repeatedly said that Europe's failure to offer trade deals or to invest smartly in emerging markets would open the door for China.
"If we don't do a trade agreement, then this void will be filled by China. I was really surprised to read in my materials that from 2020 to 2022, Chinese investment in Latin America has increased 34 times.
"This is my point, that if we are not there, they are," Kallas said, referring to the long-stalled EU trade pact with the Mercosur countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
She also argued that the bloc could rival Beijing's infrastructure investments in Africa, contending that Russia and China were coordinating on their approaches to the continent.
"If we take maps of Russian militias in Africa and investments of China and put those maps on top of each other, we see they're overlapping," Kallas said.
"Europe is a humanitarian superpower. We're doing a lot, but we aren't talking about it so much," she added.
