Op-Ed Contributors

Seeing may be believing for Ashton

By Fu Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-25 08:43

During the summer recess, Catherine Ashton, one of the European Union's most powerful ladies, may have been hastily cramming in lessons on China in preparation for negotiations with Beijing.

This Sunday, Ashton, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice-president of the European Commission, will pay a weeklong visit to China.

She is going to hold strategic talks with her Chinese counterpart in Guiyang, the capital of the poverty-hit province of Guizhou in Southwest China.

If she has the chance to get out of the meeting rooms and visit some villages, Ashton will see another side of China. Measured by the UN human development index, Shanghai is roughly equivalent to Portugal, but Guizhou is on a par with Namibia in Africa.

This may convince her that China remains a developing country, even though it will soon be, if it is not already, the world's second largest economy after the US.

However, her European colleagues may well ask her to be tougher, as business lobbyists are preparing evidence to illustrate China's changing investment environment and policy, which some claim are unfair for EU investors.

In fact, Ashton's visit is just a prelude to an ambitious foreign policy adjustment after the European Parliament voted for the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in July, which will act as a foreign ministry and diplomatic corps for the EU.

Shortly after the parliamentary vote Ashton outlined her priorities for 2010 and beyond. She has already made clear that in September the foreign ministers of the EU member states will discuss new strategies toward emerging economies, and it is expected that the strategies will mainly focus on China, which the EU believes is a major beneficiary of globalization.

Hopefully, her field trip in China will help ensure consistent foreign policies toward the emerging economies when the EU's 27 foreign ministers reframe them during the mid-September meetings.

However, that task will not be easy. One major reason is the diversity of opinions. Some member countries are willing to project values onto other economies but unwilling to allow them economic prosperity. Some scholars have suggested that when the EU has framed China policies in recent years, it usually hears only the most strident voices and sets such tones as standard.

Ashton has urged Europe to respond with "generosity" toward what they term as the global power shift. This is no longer our world and we have to adapt, was the message in a speech she made after the parliamentary vote.

Her remarks echo the views of the majority of Europeans and they reveal the rational and starting point for Ashton's foreign policy adjustments.

She said that the EU requires a big market and a robust currency to secure its economic future and the weight to defend its political vision.

Ashton's foreign policy agenda places too much emphasis on European values, instead of common prosperity. She said: "Everything we do abroad is to create the space for politics to work effectivelyWe need to defend Europe's interests and project Europe's values in a more coherent and effective way." Yet they may not win much favor with developing countries, especially those from Asia, because these countries already know that Western values won't guarantee prosperity for every country.

Meanwhile, in Asia, there is a long-lasting golden rule of diplomatic relations, and that is the Five Principles of Co-existence, initiated by former diplomatic gurus in China and India.

The essence of the principles is mutual respect and non-intervention in domestic affairs. Some in Asia have proposed that those who had initiated the Principles be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, showing how cherished these basic principles are in Asia.

Ashton's plan to project Europe's values in a "more coherent and effective" way worldwide is likely to prove very challenging for the EU.

The author is China Daily's chief correspondent in Brussels.