Pedro Sánchez’s speech at Beijing’s Tsinghua University this week caused a stir, not so much on account of what he said as for the way he said it. The Spanish prime minister delivered some home truths to his Chinese hosts but he did so within a framing of mutual respect that seemed both authentic and aligned with today’s economic and geopolitical reality.
Sánchez is the fifth in a succession of European Union leaders to visit Beijing this year, starting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the beginning of January. It is his fourth visit in as many years and each has been followed by an increase in Chinese investment in Spain, including a €4.1 billion gigafactory for electric vehicle batteries near Zaragoza that will open later this year with the promise of creating 4,000 jobs.
Spanish exports to China have increased too, but the trade deficit remains enormous at €42 billion, accounting for three quarters of Spain’s entire trade deficit. The EU’s trade deficit with China increased by 18 per cent last year, reaching €360 billion as exports to China fell by 6.5 per cent and imports rose by about the same percentage.
Sánchez opened his speech by recalling that when the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci arrived in China in 1583, he brought with him some books, an astrolabe and a map of the world.
“It was a European map, correct in its proportions, very advanced in the level of detail, but biased in its perspective. Because what it did was to show the world as the West saw it: with Europe in the centre and Asia on its right edge. At the ends of the Earth,” Sánchez said.
“The cartographers of the imperial court asked the Jesuit why China appeared at the extreme end of that map. And the European scholar understood for the first time that the Mediterranean Sea was the centre of his world, but not that of others. Each world had its centre and that’s why Matteo Ricci completely redrew his map. This time, using the Pacific Ocean as its axis and capturing the entire Eurasian continent.”
Sánchez pointed out that the Eurocentric view was distorted even in Ricci’s time, when China was already a great power accounting for a quarter of the world’s population and economy, and a leader in many areas of science and technology. More than 400 years later, he said, many continue to see the world as it appeared in Ricci’s first map and assume the world they see in old maps is the only one that is possible.
“For the first time in contemporary history, progress germinates simultaneously in many places on the planet. Places, moreover, that do not resemble each other, that don’t have the same culture, neither the same political system nor the same social conditions. And they don’t need to ask anyone for permission to grow,” he said.
“I believe that the multipolar world needs a robust multilateral system, not to impose a single vision, but to transform the melting pot of our perspectives into a strength for all humanity. Not to eliminate our differences, but to address them peacefully and respectfully.”
This acknowledgment of the validity of different political systems is the basis upon which most states, including China and the rest of the Global South, conduct relations with one another. But it is unusual among European leaders, many of whom struggle to resist trumpeting the superiority of liberal democracy and European values when they travel abroad.
Sánchez spoke up for Europe in Beijing, reminding his audience that the EU had signed trade agreements with 25 countries in the past decade, increasing imports from the Global South and creating more than 25 million jobs outside its borders every year.
“We need China to do the same. To open up so that Europe doesn’t have to close itself off,” he said.
He praised China’s role in international efforts to deal with climate change, global health challenges, AI regulation and poverty reduction but said it should do more. And he reminded Beijing that international law must be respected not only in Lebanon, Iran, Gaza and the West Bank but in Ukraine too.
Sánchez left Beijing with 19 bilateral agreements on everything from agri-food to technology co-operation, transport and education. China and Spain also established a “strategic diplomatic dialogue mechanism”, a bilateral channel chaired by their foreign ministers similar to those Beijing has set up with Paris and Beijing.
As EU member-states step up their engagement with China, the European Parliament has also reopened dialogue with a delegation visiting Beijing last week. The European Commission’s responsibility for trade and competition policy means it must have the toughest conversations with China but Sánchez showed this week that if hard talk is needed, tone matters too.
