Plenty of criticism falls these days on the European Union because of its recent agreement with the People’s Republic of China. Much of the criticism gambles on the fact that the agreement still lacks confirmation by the European Parliament. Perhaps this will reject the agreement, perhaps it will not. For the time being, however, this is the EU policy, and it’s a sensible one.

The EU does not neglect either Hong Kong or Xinjiang. The question is not whether or not, but instead what the best policy is to reverse the situation even if slowly. Surely it is better to be harsh and utter inflamed words about fighting for freedom while abandoning –yes, abandoning— the fighters to their fate beyond a new Iron Curtain. Critics take for granted that sanctions against and isolation of tyrannical regimes unreservedly guarantee the rights of the oppressed, but it is not true. Rather often it is the opposite. Commerce is a better pacifier than bullying. That is the way of post-WWII Europe, and sorry if you think otherwise.

We can expect sanctions and isolation work differently in different cases. They work for small and medium-sized countries. Continental China is a very big one, though. How many decades might it take to bring the Communist Party of China to its knees? Some Americans seem persuaded that the collapse of the Soviet Union is replicable in this case. Both are Communists, aren’t they? That is oversimplification. China has achieved a level of economic and financial development the USSR never saw. This year the Chinese Communist party celebrates its one-hundredth anniversary. It has since shown such a resilience as for us to think that it will resist external pressures until the present-day generations of Hongkongers and Uighurs are bored to death waiting for relief. Furthermore, if containment prevails, the likeliest outcome will be worsening of their conditions.

Arguably, the EU is not a match for China as a world power. This poses a limit to the possibilities of influencing the Chinese leadership. However, it certainly outdoes China as an economic and financial hub. The agreement precisely addresses the point. It aims at boosting reciprocal investments. We expect a significant growth of capital flows in both directions. The exportation of capital from the EU countries to China is particularly relevant to the issue at hand, because Hong Kong is the entrance door for foreign capital into China. While the European capital keeps flowing through Hong Kong, the EU will retain a leverage to stop Beijing from worsening the conditions in Hong Kong. Of course, we do not expect the agreement and subsequent financial flows to work by themselves. A hard diplomatic effort must be compounded with finance, maybe to accomplish a poor effect —but this is yet to be assessed thoroughly.

The problem with Xinjiang is more difficult to deal with, but the agreement contemplates a Chinese commitment to implementing the ILO fundamental conventions China has ratified as well as to ratify the conventions that include forced labor she has not yet. Perhaps it will not be compulsory enough, perhaps it will improve things a bit. In any event, in signing the agreement the EU has shown a huge respect for the suspicion that the West intends to have her surrender to a new Treaty of Nanjing or a new Boxer Protocol. For Europe that era is definitively over.

(Enrique Viaña teaches EU Economy and Institutions at the Law School in Ciudad Real, Spain.)

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