In 2018, however, there had been a marked change in the international context surrounding the Belt and Road. That summer had seen the United States launch its Indo-Pacific Economic Vision. The substance was still underdeveloped, but it was clear to anyone attending briefings at the White House ahead of its rollout that the Belt and Road was now wholly in the US crosshairs. American efforts to persuade governments to steer clear, and the surrounding public diplomacy drive to point out the risks involved, were soon in full flow. No-one had really noticed yet that a major US ally was just about to lend it an important symbolic boost. The Italian government had in fact been keen to get the thing signed during Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio’s trip to China the preceding year. But the Chinese side suggested that Xi’s state visit would be a far better occasion. Then the US embassy in Rome clocked what was going on.

  The final period before the visit was a pitched battle, as the US embassy and the White House intensified their pressure on the politicians and officials over whom they had leverage. The two political parties dealing with the issue were in distinct positions. The Five Star movement was liaising closely with the Chinese embassy, with Huawei and other entities in the Chinese system. But the League was still trying to play itself into a position of legitimacy with the US government, shoring up its dominance of swathes of the political spectrum that extended beyond its original far-right base. The China issue was now unexpectedly getting in the way. One of Salvini’s advisors lamented to me over coffee near the Italian Chamber of Deputies: “It was probably impossible to avoid joining BRI [i.e. the Belt and Road] despite powerful politicians from the League opposing it very strongly. We didn’t stop it. Geraci was put there by the League. Salvini could have stopped the signature at the last minute. He didn’t. We worked hard to persuade him. We failed.”

  Giancarlo Giorgetti was the powerful politician in question, the number two in the party, close to the US government, the institutional man to Salvini’s rougher edge. Attempts to tell the Chinese that the MOU couldn’t be signed, however, received the unequivocal response: “Then the state visit is cancelled.” With a cluster of other deals lined up and threats of retaliation mounting, it was too late. Some of those closest to the affair muttered darkly about the Vatican weighing in on Beijing’s behalf. A 2018 agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China on the appointment of bishops was expected to pave the way for a normalization of ties, which would now hang in the balance. Salvini himself decided to skip participating in the entire visit, as a pointed act of political distancing. Italian officials worked on rewriting the text to ensure that it was no longer the Chinese boilerplate language but instead fully consistent with EU principles, after other European powers weighed in too. But the Chinese got their MOU. One official joked that it was the first BRI agreement that fixed the Chinese spelling mistake that always appeared on page five.

  It was a Pyrrhic victory. The episode roundly demonstrated that the kind of political maneuvering that had gone on in recent years was not going to fly anymore. China policy was now a primetime matter, as other European states started to get their act together at an EU-wide level, and even more so in Washington. It was well understood that it would affect the quality of countries’ most important security relationship if they decided to play fast and loose with Chinese investment, technology transfer, telecoms networks or even the symbolism of handing Beijing political victories. And countries were coming under growing pressure to be “good Europeans” too, which no longer meant carte blanche for dubious side-deals or quiet blocking of common European positions.

  For years, China had benefited from the fact that it operated below the urgency threshold of other matters. It wasn’t that the importance was unclear, especially in countries such as Italy that had already borne the brunt of the China shock. But when the likes of Greece and Portugal were in a state of economic desperation, they could not afford to be choosy about the country that threw them a lifeline. When intra-European feuds over the refugee crisis were at their peak, China simply appeared to be another clever bargaining chip with Brussels. By 2019 though, the crises had passed. When the next one hit, Beijing would shred much of the trust that remained.

  5

  FEVER

  THE POLITICS OF THE PANDEMIC

  AS EUROPEAN POLICYMAKERS DECIDED how to handle the darkest days of the coronavirus outbreak in China, there was no suggestion they would gloat over, or politicize, the situation. Instead, Europe rushed to help. As the virus ravaged Wuhan, the EU provided nearly 60 tonnes of medical material to China, often from national strategic stockpiles, and did so discreetly—at Beijing’s request.[1]

  Given the explosion of criticism inside the country over the cover-up of the crucial early stages of the virus’s transmission, the quasi-martyrdom of whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang, and Xi’s temporary disappearing act, European leaders were well aware that this was a moment of extreme domestic sensitivity for the Chinese Communist Party. European leaders decided they would save recriminations about the party-state’s culpability for a later date. This would be an example of the quiet cooperation-whenit-mattered that was supposed to characterize the Sino-European relationship. “They will remember it when the time comes,” French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly told his aides.[2]

  But, just weeks later, Europe was subjected to a Chinese propaganda and disinformation barrage that would never let up. The performative nature of China’s provision of medical supplies alone would have grated on European leaders, as would its crude linkages to points of controversy—from Huawei’s role as one of the public vehicles for the supply of face masks to the videos of medical deliveries traveling along Belt and Road railway routes accompanied by soaring music. Where Europe had provided China with critical supplies for free, with no fanfare, from among its highest-quality stocks, Beijing would sell its supplies to Europe, many of which were faulty, and demand to be publicly thanked for it. This did not go down well among European leaders. Yet Europe could have, in the most generous of interpretations, attributed all this to inept and desperate propagandizing on Beijing’s part rather than malign intent.

  It quickly became clear, however, that Chinese officials and propaganda outlets were going beyond clumsy and graceless efforts to showcase their “assistance.”[3] It formed part of an active campaign that involved playing along with European populist leaders, who used the crisis as an opportunity to attack the EU and other European governments, and coordinated anti-EU messages from Chinese bots on social media.[4] Chinese state-controlled outlets promoted conspiracy theories that the virus originated in the United States or Italy.[5] The Chinese embassy in France published an article by one of its diplomats claiming that care workers in French nursing homes had left residents to die, and that Westerners were “beginning to lose confidence in liberal democracy.” A PLA colonel published an article, the unintentionally ironic “Why the US and Europe Need to Draw Closer to China and Drop the Hubris,” claiming that European solidarity was gone, the EU would not last the next twenty years and that a “divided Europe’s” turn towards China was, therefore, inevitable. “The West is not in decay,” Zhou Bo wrote, “It is falling apart. The novel coronavirus is a further blow to a West already at the nadir of its self-confidence since the eighteenth century.”[6]

  China’s attacks on the United States were somewhat to be expected, given the geopolitical tension between the countries. But Beijing also appeared to have decided to instrumentalize Europe, at a moment of deep internal strain, in a broad information battle over the supposed inadequacies of Western democracy. It was no longer enough to argue that the Chinese Communist Party had succeeded; it seemed that others had to be seen to fail.

  Far from giving European governments or the EU breathing room during the crisis, Beijing would instead make a concerted effort to take advantage of their situation. The Hungarian government rushed through a highly contentious railway deal that the EU had been trying to block.[7] Financed by the EXIM Bank, all of the details around the deal were classified for a decade under emergency legislation that the Hungarians had enacted in response to the pandemic. A Chinese state-owned venture fund sought to seize control of the United Kingdom’s major graphics-chip maker, Imagination Technologies, necessitating an emergency intervention by the British government.[8] Huawei and its advocates among European telecoms operators publicly argued that the crisis created an even greater need to accelerate the deployment of 5G.[9] Beijing’s use of the crisis as a cover became a familiar story elsewhere too, from the brutal crackdown in Hong Kong to the escalation of military incidents in the South China Sea and a border crisis with India, which attracted little attention from much of the understandably distracted world.[10]

  Beijing also explicitly linked its political interests to countries’ economic and health needs. In March, a Chinese state media outlet suggested that the US government’s treatment of Huawei could affect its access to face masks.[11] After the Netherlands changed the name of the Dutch representational office in Taiwan—a modest upgrade from the “Netherlands Trade and Investment Office, Taipei” to “Netherlands Office Taipei”—Chinese state media outlets contended that Beijing might react by suspending essential medical supplies, supposedly demanded by angry Chinese netizens.[12] The most egregious case was Australia, however, where the country’s demands for an inquiry into the origins of the virus resulted in sweeping economic sanctions on its exports of barley, wine, timber and coal.[13]

  In the very short term, European officials scrambled to respond. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, denounced China’s “aggressive” tactics and abuse of the “politics of generosity.”[14] France summoned the Chinese ambassador amid outrage among French lawmakers about the articles published by his embassy.[15] There was a newfound willingness in Europe to call out Chinese information operations. A contentious EU report that did exactly that was subjected to intense diplomatic pressure from Beijing in advance of publication. While much of the press reporting was absorbed with claims it had been watered down, the report nonetheless starkly laid out China’s “conspiracy narratives and disinformation,” “covert Chinese operations on social media” and “the coordinated push by Chinese sources to deflect any blame for the outbreak of the pandemic.”[16]

  European policymakers also moved to address China’s attempts to snap up assets on the cheap. Within days of each other, the EU trade commissioner and the NATO secretary general warned governments to exercise extra vigilance in dealing with efforts to acquire infrastructure and sensitive technologies, while the EU’s competition chief suggested that European governments should consider taking stakes in strategically important companies.[17] Germany, France, Italy and Spain all announced new protective measures. Sweden, which did not have an investment review process in place, moved ahead with plans for an emergency stopgap.

  * * *

  —

  If China’s handling of the pandemic tipped the Trump presidency into an outright political and economic confrontation with Beijing that has not abated since, the effect in Europe was no less profound. As with so much about the European outlook on China, it happened despite the fervent hope and wish that things could be otherwise. If there was an article of faith through the previous couple of decades, it was that although China may erode the liberal, democratic and market-based elements of the international order in ordinary times, it seemed driven by self-interest to hold things together when the system itself—which included the EU—came under threat.

  The behavior of the Chinese party-state during the crucial early weeks of the outbreak in Wuhan, and the exposure of Europe’s dependency on China for critical supplies, would have been grounds enough for a reassessment of their relationship. The way Beijing handled one of the most acute tests faced in recent times by European governments—and by the European project itself—guaranteed there would be a political reckoning. Deliberations in Europe about long-term issues ranging from supply chain diversification to telecoms security would afterwards take place in an atmosphere of intensified distrust of the Chinese government, as well as greater clarity about the nature of the actor China had become under Xi Jinping’s leadership.

  This perception of China as a revisionist power, but not an actively destructive one, had long conditioned European policy. European policymakers were taking steps to end their long period of asymmetric openness to China. A suite of new defensive economic instruments had already been created or set in motion. Yet, for all that, there had been a high degree of restraint on the part of European political leaders—and not only because of the need to maintain the smooth functioning of one of their countries’ largest economic relationships. Many of them expected competition, and even rivalry, with China to proceed under a cloak of civility. Neither side would stick the knife in at politically inopportune moments. Cooperation would continue wherever possible. And, if the sides faced a mutually threatening crisis, channels for close coordination between them would operate smoothly. This had been the lesson from 9/11, the financial crisis, the eurozone crisis and even Crimea.

  When the pandemic hit, European policymakers had hoped to address the urgent health and economic challenges they faced with geopolitical competition largely suspended. Pragmatic cooperation with Beijing to secure essential medical supplies and reviving shell-shocked economies would have been reason enough to set concerns aside for a time. But this crisis was different. Beijing’s willingness to exploit the pandemic, threaten countries, use the situation as cover for further repression and turn its propaganda outlets towards a full-blast denunciation of liberal democracy soon brought about a backlash from the governments and institutions on the receiving end of its political maneuvers. It would also tilt the balance for some of the most important remaining 5G holdouts.

  London, 2020

  In January of that year, the UK appeared to be partially emerging from the psychodrama that had overwhelmed its political system for the better part of four years. Between June 2016 and December 2019, the country had seen one convulsive referendum, two general elections and three different prime ministers. Brexit was all-consuming. While British officials continued to beaver away on their usual issues, at the political level—and in parliament—foreign policy matters were refracted almost entirely through Brexit politics. China itself occupied an ambiguous role here. On the one hand, ambitious new free-trade deals with China were part of the Brexiteer promise that might beguile people who didn’t look into the matter too closely. Analysis by economists who specialized in the “China shock” showed that the existing trade impact of China’s WTO accession had been one of the swing factors affecting some of the critical Brexit-voting constituencies.

  Most officials and politicians knew very well that an actual free-trade agreement with China was a non-starter, unless the intention was to wreak further economic damage on them. The more plausible-looking option was the United States. Anyone who looked into those details had serious doubts about that too given the politically contentious nature of the issues that would need to be resolved and the lurking question of Northern Ireland’s status, which would hang over any vote on the deal in Congress. But Brexit enthusiasts in the Trump administration could at least throw enough fairy dust in people’s eyes to suggest a deal might happen, in an explicit contrast with Obama’s statement in the lead-up to the referendum that the UK would be “at the back of the queue.”[18]

  Brexit politics went beyond the need to sustain the narrative that the country wouldn’t pay an economic price for its departure from the EU. The UK was going to be on its own now. It was leaving its most important economic and political partnership behind at just the moment where economics, technology and trade had become highly securitized and brutally competitive, a situation now vastly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The less wild-eyed Brexiteers knew very well that this would necessitate tightened relationships with other like-minded partners, with the United States as the sine qua non. Many of them belonged to the strand in British thinking that said that the country should never have cast its lot in with the shifty continental Europeans in the first place but rather rooted its identity in the Anglosphere. Regardless of any free-trade agreements or populist Brexit/Trump mutual boosterism, the UK could not realistically chart a solo course after leaving the world’s largest trade bloc, and the transatlantic partnership would be the essential foundation of whatever came afterwards. But the message coming from Washington was increasingly sharp: choosing Huawei will come at a real cost to the alliance.

  For many in the British government who had been buried in Brexit issues for the past couple of years, the inclination was to see all this as more Trumpian bluster. They thought they could ride it out. Maybe there would be a period on the naughty step. The anyway-difficult FTA might be threatened, they would be shouted at for a while and in extremis there might be some punitive-but-reversible steps on defense or intelligence cooperation. But then the US would learn to live with the new reality. There was the chance that elections in November 2020 might bring to power a new administration that would go softer on Huawei, UK officials privately suggested.

  They were being told by their telecoms firms that the 5G rollout would be delayed if they listened to the Americans, putting at risk the plans to turn the country into a science, technology and advanced industrial hub that was supposed to be part of its post-Brexit rebirth. And the Chinese ambassador to the UK was stark about the implications for the bilateral relationship, stating in public later that year that Britain would “bear the consequences” if it treats China as a “hostile” country over its Huawei decision and that it was “not in the UK’s interest” to make an enemy of Beijing.[19]