South Africa ducked the Paris meeting, apparently because of concerns that its real purpose was to devise a strategy to contain China, which is growing more assertive in the region and worrying other countries.
Russia and China both dominated the first meeting between the European Union and the Indo-Pacific region in Paris on Tuesday – even though neither country was present.Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision this week to officially recognise two separatist regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine and to order Russian “peacekeepers” into those regions became the main topic in exchanges between the media and the foreign ministers attending the forum.
But both Borrell and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who co-chaired the forum, denied that its intention was to form a bloc against China. “It’s not against China or anyone,” Le Drian insisted. “It’s about the development of partnerships between the European Union and the Indo-Pacific…” One of the goals of the digital partnership is to ensure the digital privacy of the individual, French officials said. This project could be interpreted as an implicit alternative to Chinese company Huawei’s growing international dominance in the supply of 5G digital technology. Some Western countries claim Huawei is obliged by Chinese law to hand over to Beijing’s intelligence agencies any information they demand about its customers.
Visentin said other operational areas of coordinated maritime presence could be added, including the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. He did not rule out one in the South China Sea, which is where China is aggressively asserting its claims to several islands, and restricting the freedom of movement of ships of other nations.
International relations minister Naledi Pandor was invited to the forum, as South Africa occupies a strategic position at the southwestern entrance to the Indo-Pacific region. Pretoria kept France and the EU guessing for a few weeks about whether Pandor would attend. Though Le Drian and Borrell denied this and China’s name was not officially mentioned, its presence as a motivating force could be implied in some of the agreements, discussions and projects, such as the coordinated maritime presence and the plans to develop digital networks which respected individual privacy.