VÄSTERÅS, Sweden — On a recent weekday in the Swedish industrial town of Västerås, about an hour’s drive west from Stockholm, Mayor Anders Teljebäck admitted defeat.
The municipal council had just voted to shut down a three-year partnership with Jinan, a Chinese city in Shandong province. As part of the state-funded program, called “residents’ dialogue,” Chinese officials had visited Sweden and vice versa, holding workshops on how to involve citizens in local government.
But after just a year, momentum had stalled — amid a high-profile spat between Stockholm and Beijing over human rights — and the Swedish town voted to end the partnership.
“We see that we won’t make the type of progress that we want to make,” Teljebäck conceded, speaking at his office in city hall.
Västerås is a microcosm of what is happening across Sweden, where officials and business leaders are waking up to the reality of dealing with the Chinese one-party state, after years spent looking for ways to tighten trade and diplomatic ties with Beijing.
“We didn’t think we could turn China into a democracy, of course” — Anders Teljebäck, Västerås mayor
The deteriorating human rights situation in China — which has come under fire for its incarceration of its Muslim population in Xinjiang province — and Beijing’s increasingly muscular military and diplomatic stance abroad has caused some European governments, like Sweden, to rethink their willingness to engage.
But as Stockholm found out when a Swedish NGO awarded a prize to a Chinese dissident, pushing back against Beijing means putting yourself in the line of fire of a nation with a growing arsenal of diplomatic weapons — very often, alone.
The recent diplomatic blow-up was a reminder that European states who strike out against the Chinese have not been able to rely on the support and firepower of the EU, which has yet to decide to what extent it wants to stand up to Beijing.
David and Goliath
In the first half of the last decade, Swedish engagement with China was largely fast-paced and friction-free. Starting in 2010, scores of Swedish companies came under Chinese ownership — including carmaker Volvo — while a number of Swedish multinationals expanded operations in China.
Europe is struggling over its engagement with China | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
Over the years, small-scale civic partnerships were struck up between places like Västerås and Jinan, in part to ease trade and in part with the idea of exporting democratic ideas to China and help Chinese citizens play a more active role in how their cities are run.
“Our aim was to look at how we should be a part of local progress with things like equality and transparency,” said Västerås mayor Teljebäck, though he hastened to add: “We didn’t think we could turn China into a democracy, of course.”
Sino-Swedish relations took a sharp dip in 2015, when Gui Minhai, a Swedish bookseller known for publishing books critical of Chinese leaders, disappeared from his home in Thailand only to later show up in Chinese custody accused of causing a traffic accident.
Stockholm pushed for Gui’s release, but made little progress in securing his return to Sweden.
After years of simmering diplomatic tension over the case, relations worsened again in late 2019, when a Swedish NGO awarded Gui a prize and a Swedish minister attended the award ceremony in Stockholm.
The incident triggered a forceful response from Beijing: The Chinese ambassador to Sweden accused the government of “interfering in China’s internal affairs and judicial sovereignty” and trade missions to Stockholm were canceled.
“Europe runs into trouble when its members go their own way” — Noah Barkin, analyst
In an interview with Swedish state television, he also compared Swedish media coverage of the Gui case to a lightweight boxer who keeps challenging a heavyweight to a fight and won’t back off. “What choice do you expect the heavyweight boxer to have?”
His comments sent a chill through Sweden’s political, diplomatic and business communities and were condemned by the foreign minister as “unacceptable.”
Along with Västerås, other towns began looking at winding down their cooperation with Chinese partner cities, according to local reports in Swedish media.
Sweden’s second largest city of Gothenburg, the home of Volvo Cars, decided to maintain its cooperation with Shanghai, but said it would look at the situation again in the spring.
Meanwhile, the Swedish government scrambled to respond to a David-and-Goliath match-up with China.
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde confirmed that relations between Stockholm and Beijing are strained | Maxim Shipenkov/EPA
Relations between Sweden and China have been “adversely affected” by the Gui case, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde told POLITICO.
“Despite demands from the Swedish government, the Chinese authorities refuse to fulfill China’s obligations under international consular agreements.”
She welcomed official statements of support from the EU regarding the case, she added, saying the government “will never give up our efforts” to secure Gui’s release.
Divide and rule
The Stockholm-Beijing spat has highlighted that beyond those official statements, the EU has shown little appetite to take Beijing to task over the threats to Stockholm.
Sweden is not the only European country to have been stung with diplomatic rebukes from Beijing after years spent seeking closer economic ties.
China’s foreign ministry on Monday warned France and other European countries that limiting telco giant Huawei’s access to their markets could “affect” the activities of EU firms in China.
In January, Shanghai’s city government cut off all contact with Prague, after the Czech city’s officials signed a sister-city agreement with Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Prague mayor Zdeněk Hřib also faced blowback from Beijing for refusing to act on a Chinese official’s demand that a Taiwanese diplomat be removed from a conference and for flying the Tibetan flag from city hall.
“Many global challenges can only be solved in cooperation with China. The government supports a broad dialogue with China” — Ann Linde, Swedish foreign minister
Norway’s economic and political relations with China were also in the deep freeze between 2010 and 2016 after Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian panel that decides on the recipient.
For the new European Commission of Ursula von der Leyen, this type of bilateral diplomatic dispute represents an early test of resolve for her plan to play a greater geopolitical role in the world.
The EU has taken to calling China a “systemic rival” and von der Leyen said in September that the EU must “define relations with a more self-assertive China.”
But so far, the EU has let individual countries fend for themselves when they come under pressure from Beijing.
The new European Commission has “geopolitical” ambitions | Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images
“Europe runs into trouble when its members go their own way,” Noah Barkin, a visiting fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a Berlin-based think tank, wrote in a recent analysis.
Smaller countries like Hungary and Greece are often accused of succumbing to China’s “divide-and-rule” tactics by accepting investment from China when it comes to infrastructure projects, Barkin said.
“But big states are also to blame,” he added. “Germany, with its deep economic ties to China, has consistently shied away from confrontation.”
Balancing act
Meanwhile, in Sweden, the balancing act continues.
Linde, the foreign minister, said the Swedish government will continue to attempt to “harness the opportunities that China’s development offers and manage the challenges the country presents us with.”
“Many global challenges can only be solved in cooperation with China,” Linde said. “The government supports a broad dialogue with China.”
In Västerås — which is home to a handful of big industrial companies like ABB and Northvolt — the mayor said he had spoken with the chamber of commerce and did not think that ending the residents’ dialogue had damaged his town’s ability to export to China.
“Of course, Sweden’s China policy is not that we should end all contact, of course we should not do that.”