Opinion | Why Xi’s European tour was a quiet but effective victory over the US

President Xi Jinping’s recently concluded European trip was a quiet but meaningful success. This was not the result of any headline-grabbing policy victories; none were expected and none were achieved.

Instead, this success derived from his ability to stiff-arm European complaints about China’s economic and geopolitical conduct while reinforcing anti-US sentiment, thereby hindering Washington’s ability to draw the European Union into a more unified and tougher stance against China.

The specific objectives of Xi’s five-day trip to France, Serbia and Hungary were to deflect European allegations about the potentially deleterious impact of China’s excess industrial capacity on EU producers and hold a firm line against accusations that China is surreptitiously supporting Russia’s war effort through exports of dual-use technologies and machine tools.

As US-China rivalry intensifies, Europe has become an increasingly important fulcrum. An EU that aligns more tightly with the US’ confrontational approach complicates life significantly for Beijing. Attempting to split the EU from the US – or at least forestall any meaningful migration closer to the US camp – has therefore become a cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy.

Towards that end, Xi took every opportunity to remind his friends in Europe of the heavy-handedness, hypocrisy and occasional collateral damage that has accompanied US hegemony. It was therefore no coincidence that Xi visited Serbia to mark the 25th anniversary of the deadly Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war. The US apologised for what it characterised as an unfortunate mistake, but the incident left deep scars that remain to this day.