Xi offers Europe alternative to Trump’s Board of Peace

Xi Jinping has offered Europe new trade partnerships and promised to uphold the “values” of the United Nations.

The move is an apparent attempt to capitalise on the continent’s growing rift with the United States.

On Tuesday, Sir Keir Starmer became the latest leader to travel to Beijingafter Mark Carney and Petteri Orpo, the prime ministers of Canada and Finland.

In a meeting with Mr Orpo on Tuesday, the Chinese president said China and Europe were “partners, not adversaries” and invited Finnish companies to “swim in the vast ocean of the Chinese market”.

He also appeared to snub Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, a body set up to rival the United Nations, whose members so far include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

According to Xinhua, the state news service, he said China was ready to work with Finland to “uphold the international system with the United Nations at its core”. He added that major countries should “observe the rule of law, pursue co-operation and uphold integrity”.

While Mr Xi often extols such principles in public, he has sought to position China as a responsible trading partner and global power at the same time as Mr Trump pursues a more belligerent, norm-shredding approach to international diplomacy.

Beijing is ready to work more closely with Britain, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday as Sir Keir arrived for a four-day visit with a delegation from 50 companies and institutions.

On Monday, The Telegraph revealed that Chinese spies had hacked phones in No 10 – the latest in a series of espionage scandals that have provoked bipartisan warnings against deepening Britain’s reliance on China.

Last week, the UK Government finally approved plans for a new Chinese “super-embassy”, overruling concerns that the site could be used to spy on cables transmitting data to the City of London.

On Sunday, an editorial in the state-run China Daily warned European leaders that “being an ally of the US is meaningless in the calculus of ‘America first’”, citing threats of tariffs and the row over Greenland.

The frictions should serve as a “clarion call for the continent to bolster its strategic autonomy” and “diversify its interests,” the article read.

It came as the US Treasury Secretary hit out at the EU’s trade deal with India, which was finalised on Tuesday after 20 years of negotiations. Scott Bessent accused Europe of “financing the war against themselves” by purchasing products derived from Russian crude oil.

Chinese propaganda outlets are seeking to exploit tensions between the US and the EU, according to a survey of 40 articles in the People’s Daily from January 10-23 conducted by Jamestown, a Washington-based think tank.

An article from Friday quoted the foreign secretaries of France and Britain saying they would not be joining Mr Trump’s Board of Peace, while critical coverage of “American blackmail” over Greenland has been a running theme.

In a speech at Davos, Mr Carney ignited a diplomatic firestorm by urging “middle powers” to work together to avoid being bullied by the US.

On his trip to Beijing, the Canadian prime minister announced a trade deal that will remove tariffs on Chinese electric cars – allowing them an entry into the North American market – in return for opening up China to Canadian agricultural products.

But in a sign of the difficulty of managing relations with the world’s two super-powers, Mr Trump responded on the weekend by threatening a 100 per cent tariff on Canadian goods.

Mr Bessent claimed that led Mr Carney to “walk back” his Davos comments in a call with the president.

“I was in the Oval [Office] with the president today. He spoke to Prime Minister Carney, who was very aggressively walking back some of the unfortunate remarks he made at Davos,” he told Fox News.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]