Washington calls on allies to band together against China’s ‘economic coercion’

The U.S. is calling on like-minded countries to ward off commercial pressure from Beijing by uniting forces, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a speech on Wednesday from NATO headquarters in Brussels.

“We must not separate economic coercion from other forms of pressure. When one of us is coerced, we should respond as allies and work together to reduce our vulnerability by ensuring our economies are more integrated with each other than they are with our principal competitors,” Blinken said, adding the example of Chinese economic pressures on Australia earlier this year.

With the EU-China investment deal hanging on a political thread due to plummeting relations, as China sanctioned European diplomats, lawmakers and academics on Monday, Blinken sought to convey the message that a wide alliance of democracies should work together to counter China’s influence, including its economic pressures.

When asked earlier on Wednesday how he sees the EU’s investment agreement with China, Blinken responded, “when it comes to dealing with some of China’s practices in the commercial area … that we all object to, if the United States is taking those on its own, we’re about 25 percent of world GDP. When we’re actually working with our European partners, Asian partners and others, we might be 40, 50 or 60 percent of world GDP. That’s a lot harder for Beijing to ignore.”

“We’ve seen how Beijing and Moscow are increasingly using access to critical resources, markets and technologies to pressure our allies and drive wedges between us,” he said, before adding, “of course, each state’s decision is its own.”