The EU and China are close to reaching a long-awaited business investment deal, according to media reports.
The pact, expected to be finalised this week, will give EU firms better access to the Chinese market and improve competition conditions.
Talks on the investment deal began in 2014 but have been stuck for years over a number of issues.
But rising trade tensions between the US and China may have helped change the Chinese position, officials said.
The deal comes hot on the heels of the UK’s post-Brexit trade agreement with the EU which was announced on 24 December.
According to multiple reports, the deal would open up China’s manufacturing sector to EU companies, as well as construction, advertising, air transport and telecoms.
One of the sticking points was China’s demands for access to the EU’s energy market given sensitivities over national security. The deal is expected to give Beijing access to a small part of the European renewable energy sector on a reciprocal basis.
The pact is also designed to remove barriers to investment in China such as joint-venture requirements and caps on foreign ownership in certain industries.
Once the expected deal is reached, it needs to be ratified by the European parliament, a process that may not begin until the second half of 2021.
Hard labour
On Monday, the European Commission reported progress on the talks with Beijing, including the core issue of workers’ rights in China.
This is a contentious issue given reports that China uses Uighur Muslims detained in large numbers in the Xinjiang province as forced labour. Beijing denies these claims.
Under the agreement, China is being asked to pledge to subscribe to the International Labour Organisation’s rules on forced labour. An EU-China agreement is expected to cause frictions with the incoming administration of US president-elect Joe Biden.Earlier this month the EU published a transatlantic strategy in which it urged the US to work with it to meet the “strategic challenge” posed by China.
China and the US have been locked in a trade war since 2018 and the Trump administration has targeted a number of Chinese tech companies as threats to national security.EU-China relations themselves have been strained this year, over China’s imposition of a new security law in Hong Kong and accusations it spread disinformation about the coronavirus.
Comments
14 responses to “China and EU ‘on verge’ of major investment (BBC News Dec, 29 2020)”
American corporations should stop using ‘forced’ labour from the US private prison systems.
The conversation on human rights and forced labour issues mentioned by the Europeans and the US have different emphaisis. Here, the Europeans are reminding China about the sensitivity of these issues from a moral ethical grounds whilst the US goes beyond it and into demonization and containment. These issues are at best controversial and the US track record on these issues are not exactly kosher (hypocrisy). Hence, such constant barrages of human rights abuse generally fall on deaf year – efficacy ZERO. Our MSM does not report these trade pacs in good light generally whereas European media sources in Germany potrays a truer picture.
Yet, as a casual reading of the 13th. Amendment reveals, the USA has yet to outlaw slavery and has repeatedly blocked China’s efforts to include the right to food and shelter in the Universal Declaration.
Beijing always reserved Hong Kong’s security for itself and, has consistently proven to be the most transparent about the virus. Only now do we know that there were 4,000,000 Covid cases in the USA when China discovered its first. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1785/6012472
Prove it, Godfree.
Your quoted article notes that there were 106 identified cases in the U. S. dating back to December 13th. How do you get 4M from 106??
Here is the CDC’s spreadsheet. My added, highlighted, rows simply extrapolate their figures to the entire population:
https://i.imgur.com/RmTqIMp.png
If I have understood and correctly applied the CDC figures, and if Covid’s doubling interval is 2.68 days, the first US case occurred in October, 2019, which matches anecdotal reports of symptoms on both coasts and in Europe.
OK. Thank you. I accept your reasoning.
Unorthodox as it certainly is in addressing ‘conventional wisdom’.
Indeed, this question challenges international political credibility.
Which then means that I agree that the U. S. has some outstanding questions to answer. Questions of global importance. Maybe ‘Uncle Joe’ will be appropriately avuncular!
But will he be I/V’d by a latter-day Walter Cronkite?
Here’s something that’s currently puzzling me: On Jan 24, 2019, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-CT, introduced H.R. 748, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, CARES.
A year later, on March 27, 2020, it became Public Law 116-136.
Effective Coronavirus testing began in the US on March 27, 2020.
Is Rep. Courtney psychic?
I have no idea!
Is there a Walter Cronkite who can ask him (not on Fox News)?
Perhaps Senator Elizabeth Warren could ask him (the only politician with the balls to do so)!!
Excellent, Godfree!
In reference to Europe, it was interesting to read of the results of a recent study done in Italy, by Italian cancer medicos in cahoots with the WHO.
The cancer medicos had retained tissue samples from routine screening for (bowel IIRC) cancer in volunteers from Lombardy.
They found the virus present in some tissue samples taken in early October meaning, given the fortnight odd for the infection to register, there had been infections in Lombardy in September.
The screening program began in September, leaving the medicos looking around for what they might have in the fridge from before September.
Thanks. Do you have a link to the Italian cancer medicos’ findings? That would be extremely useful for an article I’m preparing on this topic.
One of a number – https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idUSKBN27W1J2
(Note: Lung, not bowel)
“….The Italian researchers’ findings, published by the INT’s scientific magazine Tumori Journal, show 11.6% of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020 had developed coronavirus antibodies well before February.
A further SARS-CoV-2 antibodies test was carried out by the University of Siena for the same research titled “Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the pre-pandemic period in Italy”.
It showed that four cases dating back to the first week of October were positive for antibodies, meaning they had got infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told Reuters…..”
P.S. Of course, being Reuters;
“….signaling that it might have spread beyond China earlier than thought.”
‘Signalled’ to them and their ilk, while those engaged in genuine scientific enquiry continue putting together a time line that’s heading backwards from Dec ’19/Jan ’20.
Grazie!
Does anyone else see what looks like an endlessly repeated example of hypocrisy when China is tasked with implementing workers’ rights, especially in relation to suspected detained Muslims in Xinjiang, while inmates of privatized jails in the U.S. are said to work for a pittance, including being used as firefighters in California?
The new agreement between the EU and China is too important to be derailed by the West’s corporate shrills, altho I am sure they will try hard to do so.