Despite the repression of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement under the National Security Law, allegations of forced sterilization of Uyghur women, and China’s coercive information warfare, the European Union has failed to take effective action.
Focusing on Germany’s indecisive policy toward China, its largest trading partner, this article examines how economic interests are undermining Europe’s commitment to democracy and human rights.

On August 4, 2020, the Hong Kong National Security Law had come into force, and the Chinese Communist Party regime was intensifying its repression of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
At the same time, allegations had emerged that women in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region were being forced to undergo sterilization as part of a campaign to suppress the Uyghur population.
While the United States imposed sanctions, the European Union issued statements but failed to take effective action.
Behind this reluctance were not only Greece and several Eastern European countries, which depended heavily on Chinese investment, but also Germany, whose largest trading partner was China.
The following was written after reading a report entitled “Where Has the ‘Europe of Human Rights’ Gone?” by Mina Mitsui, the Sankei Shimbun’s Paris bureau chief, published on that day.
Mina Mitsui is one of the finest female journalists working today.
【Main Text】
Germany’s attitude remains indecisive.
China is Germany’s largest trading partner.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s strategy is said to be to use trade as a means of exerting pressure and persuading China to change its behavior.
However, a former German diplomat known to Mina Mitsui responded with an air of resignation:
“China will not change, no matter what anyone says.”
What has happened to the European Union?
Democracy in Hong Kong is in grave danger, yet the EU is doing nothing.
To be precise, it has issued a statement.
Following the enforcement of the Hong Kong National Security Law, the EU decided to restrict exports of equipment that might be used to repress Hong Kong’s pro-independence and pro-democracy movements.
Yet China is far more capable than the EU of manufacturing such equipment.
The statement also called for increased university exchanges with Hong Kong.
However, the young people being arrested one after another are hardly in a position to take part in “exchanges.”
Even when it was still primarily an economic community, the EU presented “respect for human rights” as one of its defining principles.
During the Cold War, it spoke out not only against human rights violations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but also against abuses in Asia and Africa, sometimes so actively that its interventions were regarded as excessive.
When the Tiananmen Square crackdown occurred in 1989, Europe immediately imposed an arms embargo on China.
France accepted Chinese democracy activists into exile and invited them to attend the Bastille Day parade.
A former senior French official who remembers that period recalled:
“We gathered Chinese students living in Paris and organized a bicycle march.
There was a strong determination to demonstrate the pride of France as a nation committed to human rights in the face of Chinese repression.”
That European Union has changed completely.
In June 2020, the European Parliament adopted a resolution declaring that the Hong Kong National Security Law violated international human rights agreements and should be brought before an international court.
However, a European Commission spokesperson dismissed the proposal at a press conference, saying:
“That is not our position.”
Soon afterward, allegations emerged that China was forcing women from the Muslim Uyghur minority to undergo sterilization as part of a campaign to suppress the Uyghur population.
If births are being prevented with the intention of destroying an ethnic group, this could constitute a violation of the Genocide Convention.
The United States imposed sanctions.
The EU did not act.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, merely said:
“We will follow our own path.”
One reason the EU is so reluctant to confront China is that Greece and several Eastern European countries depend heavily on Chinese investment and oppose sanctions.
Germany, which then held the rotating presidency of the EU, was also unable to take a clear position.
China was Germany’s largest trading partner.
Chancellor Merkel’s strategy was supposedly to use trade and commercial pressure to persuade China to change its conduct.
However, a former German diplomat known to the writer said with an expression of resignation:
“China will not change, no matter what anyone says.”
He added:
“Anti-American sentiment is spreading in Germany.
Political forces calling for the United States and Europe to unite and take a tougher position toward China cannot gain public support.”
The United States was applying pressure not only to China but also to the European Union through threats of tariffs and other punitive measures.
Washington accused Germany of failing to bear its proper share of the defense and military-base burden and unilaterally announced a reduction in the number of American troops stationed in Germany.
Relations between the United States and Europe, and between the United States and Germany in particular, had grown extremely cold.
In July 2020, the EU agreed to issue €750 billion in joint debt, approximately ¥93.5 trillion at the time, to support countries severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
European leaders were preoccupied with controlling the pandemic and rebuilding their economies.
As confrontation between the United States and China intensified ahead of the American presidential election, Europe adopted a defensive posture based on the belief that it must not become entangled in the conflict.
The government of Xi Jinping, however, remained consistently aggressive.
Whenever Western European countries criticized China’s human rights record, Beijing dismissed the criticism as “fabrications by the media” and launched information-manipulation campaigns.
When Swedish public television continued to press China on the issue, the Chinese ambassador reportedly sneered:
“Do you know what happens when a lightweight boxer challenges a heavyweight?”
This was not diplomacy.
It was intimidation.
China was attempting to frighten the EU while simultaneously dividing it from within.
A statement widely attributed to the eighteenth-century British political thinker Edmund Burke says:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
If the EU remains unable to speak out against China, democracy and human rights will eventually become endangered within Europe itself.
Silence toward China does not amount to neutrality.
Silence benefits the party carrying out the repression.
This is not merely a question about Hong Kong or the Uyghurs.
It is a question of whether Europe still possesses the will to defend the principles of democracy and human rights that it has long claimed to represent.