The European Union could be a “moderator” in crises in the Taiwan Strait, the bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said on Monday. “The EU in this scenario is trying to act as a moderator,” Borrell told a forum in Santander, Spain, saying he was “seriously concerned” about the situation that flared up earlier this month when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.
Pelosi, second in line to the US presidency, was in Taipei for just 19 hours, but it sparked a furious reaction from the Chinese government that escalated to a series of unprecedented military drills that some speculate could form a template for a future blockade of the island. Asked if he had plans to visit Taiwan, Borrell said he did not, “and I don’t think the president of the commission [Ursula von der Leyen] will travel to Taiwan either”.
“This makes the relationship with China especially delicate, and this is why we need to avoid giving [China] a pretext for tensions to grow,” Borrell said. Mrs Pelosi has the right to travel wherever she wants, of course, but one thing is your right and the other thing is the right moment.”
He added that he had seen how “uncomfortable” American authorities had been made by the trip.
“Taiwan is a small country, but it produces 70 per cent of the world’s semiconductors; 90 per cent of hi-tech semiconductors,”
Borrell said, in remarks made in Spanish that were independently verified by the Post. “Explain to me how is it possible that I have a country the size of Andalusia that has suddenly managed to rise to the highest point of global technological capacity in a sector as critical as semiconductors?”
Asked what the EU would do if Beijing attacked Taiwan, Borrell said “everyone tries to avoid direct confrontation with China”. “That’s what the US has tried to avoid very carefully – everyone defends the rights of Taiwan to develop its political system. But everyone deals very carefully and tries to avoid a direct confrontation with China,” he said. “We from the West and North America have to defend the rights of the Taiwanese people, but Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations. It is not acknowledged as a state. Therefore we maintain strategic ambiguity.”
Beijing regards Taiwan, a self-governing island with 23 million residents, as a rogue province that will eventually be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. Most countries, including EU members, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state but Western governments oppose any attempts to take the island by force.
At a recent Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting in Cambodia, Borrell said top Chinese envoy Wang Yi had restated Beijing’s aims to reunify with Taiwan at all costs. “The Chinese minister very emphatically mentioned the existence of only one China, that Taiwan is part of China, and that the reunification will take place sooner rather than later. In a bad or good away.”
Borrell, speaking at the launch of a week of seminars at Menéndez Pelayo International University in the northern Spanish city, said the EU had received assurances from Beijing that it had not provided arms to Russia for use in the invasion of Ukraine. “Up to now the Chinese authorities have said no that they will not do so, in the high-level summits that we’ve had,” Borrell said.
However, Chinese officials have also blamed the EU for helping spark the war, he added.
“China has always stated that they are against the sanctions. You put them in place and you are also to blame. You’ve been attacking Russia with the deployment of Nato at their border, so you’re also to blame,” he said. “But we won’t condemn Russia, nor supply military help … depending on how things go.”
In the long term, Borrell reiterated his view that China and Russia were trying to provide alternative models of government to the liberal democracies of the West and cautioned that the economic dependencies Europe created with Russia are being replicated with China. “We fed financially a system that we did not believe would evolve to what [Vladimir] Putin represents nowadays,” Borrell said. “In the same way that we did not think China being part of international organisations will go to become a more authoritarian country.
“China is the paradigm of the belief in interdependence we Europeans have forged in the liberal democratic culture. We firmly believe that freedom brings prosperity and prosperity brings peace.” But China provides a “counter example”, he said. “Prosperity can be something achieved as an authoritarian regime … the Chinese don’t decide about their open elections where the political parties compete, they are not as democratic.”
Josep Borrell ‘seriously concerned’ about flare-up in tensions after US House speaker visited Taipei and says he has no plans to travel to the island ‘Everyone defends the rights of Taiwan to develop its political system but tries to avoid a direct confrontation with China,’ he tells forum in Spain