Wrapping up his first overseas trip during the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called on Europe to resist US efforts to decouple economically from China and to renounce the unilateralism promoted by US President Donald Trump, reported the South China Morning Post.
But Wang made only limited diplomatic gains in talks that were weighed down by “promise fatigue”, analysts said. He secured a meeting in France with President Emmanuel Macron, but in Germany there was no public event with Chancellor Angela Merkel or any officials from her Christian Democratic Union party.
Noah Barkin, an EU-China specialist at Rhodium Group, a policy research firm, noted the growing sense of “promise fatigue” among European governments, despite frequent Chinese references to multilateralism.
“It has been nearly four years since Xi [Jinping] preached the virtues of multilateralism in Davos and Europe is still waiting for deeds to follow,” he said. For example, he noted, “Berlin and Brussels have been pressing Beijing to agree to joint climate action for nearly a year without results.”
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