On Wednesday last week the European Parliament did something Beijing has spent decades trying to prevent: It read the documents. By 454 votes to 86, with 110 abstentions, members of the European Parliament adopted a recommendation to the European Council, the European Commission and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas that sets out what EU policy on China says and, more usefully, what it has never said.
Start with the phrase the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) most enjoys misquoting. The EU has a “one China policy,” which acknowledges Beijing’s claim to Taiwan without endorsing it, a distinction any 12-year-old grasps and the Chinese foreign ministry has failed to absorb in 50 years. The “one China principle,” under which Taiwan is already Chinese and merely awaits invasion, belongs to Beijing alone. The parliament notes that the EU has never signed on to that and that this still needs saying is the quiet triumph of Chinese diplomacy: repeat a falsehood in enough joint communiques and people begin apologizing for not believing it.
Then there is UN Resolution 2758. The 1971 General Assembly text decided who would hold China’s seat at the UN, and it says nothing about Taiwan or its sovereignty. Beijing wields it anyway, as a skeleton key to lock Taiwanese out of bodies whose business is health and aviation, forgetting that a virus does not check passports and a plane does not care which flag the controller salutes. The parliament rejects the distortion and the pressure on international organizations that enforces it. It also condemns transnational repression and the extraterritorial reach of Chinese law, which assumes that statutes travel with their citizens, and occasionally with other people’s, to whatever country they land in.
Add the language on forced labor in Xinjiang, repression in Tibet, China’s stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and resilience against espionage and hybrid threats, and the text reads less like diplomacy than a well-kept ledger of grievances, itemized and accurate, which in this field counts as a surprise.
A little sobriety is in order. A recommendation binds no one, and the council might nod gravely before returning to lunch. Several member states treat Beijing’s displeasure as weather to be managed with trade delegations and soft adjectives, and the 86 votes against and 110 abstentions suggest that some parliamentarians still mistake silence for prudence, usually until the next cyberattack or tariff retaliation corrects them.
Even so, the direction is correct. Taiwan has been asked for decades to be patient, flexible and creative about its own existence, so it is a relief to see Europe asked, for once, to be clear. The parliament opposes any change to the “status quo” by force or coercion, or against the will of the Taiwanese people, and it urges deeper cooperation on semiconductors and cybersecurity. None of this is radical. It is merely the absence of a lie.
Beijing will answer as it always does, with interference in internal affairs, the wounded feelings of 1.4 billion people and a stern spokesperson using the word “resolutely” at least twice. The facts will not move. The People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949 and has never governed Taiwan for a single day, and a claim to own what you have never ruled is not a principle, but an ambition with a press office.
The time has come for democracies to stop negotiating the meaning of words and decline to repeat the CCP’s rhetoric. Strasbourg has made a start, and a modest one, but starts are where these things begin. Taipei should not thank it too effusively, since Europe has merely done its homework, and the point of homework is that someone eventually hands it in.
Clive Hazell is a Kaohsiung-based writer and educator.