The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed several crucial issues for the European Union, among them the vulnerability of vital supply chains, especially those sourced in China. Equally important and increasingly apparent is the extent to which China’s economic as well as political leverage, including vis-à-vis the EU, has grown. These issues raise important questions.

As the European Commission clarified in Spring 2019, China is simultaneously a cooperation and negotiating partner, an economic competitor, and a systemic rival to the European Union. The EU has a major role to play in setting the values and standards of the 21st-century world — now a world struggling to overcome public health as well as an economic crisis. Guided by our values — above all the rights and freedoms inherent to democracy — we must act with strategic vision, boldness, and unity in putting forward a uniquely European model of global cooperation.

In recent months, we have become increasingly aware and particularly concerned by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) aggressive effort to spread propaganda and to pressure critics, including even by censoring EU political messages. The CCP has pushed disinformation aimed to deflect legitimate criticism of its handling of the pandemic and to undermine Western political values.

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