Xi’s Upcoming Visit to Europe Is CCP’s New Attempt to Divide US and Europe: Experts

U.S. and European Union flags are pictured during the visit of Vice President Mike Pence to the European Commission headquarters in Brussels on Feb. 20, 2017. Francois Lenoir/Reuters

The Chinese communist regime’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently announced that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping would visit three European countries from May 5 to May 10, his first visit to Europe in five years.

Taiwanese researchers Lai Rongwei and Wang Guo-chen say the trip is the CCP’s new attempt to divide Europe and the United States through economic enticement and coercion.

Xi’s trip comes amid heightened trade tensions between China and the European Union, as the EU is conducting investigations into the CCP’s state subsidies for Chinese companies in undercutting European rivals.

The three countries that Xi is scheduled to visit are France, Hungary, and Serbia.

France is considered a weak link in the EU, as it attaches great importance to trade with China.

Hungary is the most friendly country in the EU to the CCP, and Serbia is known as a dedicated supporter of the Chinese regime.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic were among the few European dignitaries who attended the Belt and Road summit forum in Beijing in October 2023.

“[The CCP] wants to create so-called non-cooperation and disunity among European countries and even wants to cause discord between Europe and the United States,” Mr. Lai, CEO of the Taiwan Inspirational Association, told The Epoch Times of Xi’s Europe trip. “Then, using this to break the containment of China by the United States.”

He said that Xi “intends to resort to his old trick again, economic coercion [to achieve his goal].”

The United States has shown public support to countries coerced by the CCP through economic means. The State Department has stepped up in its efforts in recent years to advise countries to strategize on how to reduce reliance on China and how to respond to the CCP’s threats, especially after the regime’s retaliation on Lithuania for its support of Taiwan’s sovereignty in 2020. This year, the United States helped the Philippines to expand its export market and seek other resources to support its agriculture production to reduce economic reliance on China, as tensions with Beijing escalated over the South China Sea dispute.

Mr. Lai said the State Department’s advice to other countries shows the world that the United States can help if any country is economically coerced by the CCP.

“This is on a very high strategic level to assist allies to prevent [the CCP] from doing things that undermine the status quo in regional peace,” he said.

“It can be seen from this series of actions that the United States and European countries have actually noticed [the CCP] using economic means to create oppression. There are only a few countries in Europe that are economically weak [that] need the economic exchanges with China.”

Mr. Wang, an assistant researcher at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times: “The overall picture of Europe and the United States is probably very clear, that is, from the original unilateral confrontation between the United States and China, it is now slowly expanding to the EU and Japan to jointly counter [the CCP’s] economic coercion, from traditional tariff wars to technology ban, and now rising to the level of economic security.”

Zhang Hong and Luo Ya contributed to this report.