Unusual
Hammelburg calls King Willem-Alexander’s reception of the Chinese vice president “unusual”. He believes that Prime Minister Rutte and Minister Hoekstra thought it important to show that they take it seriously. ‘It also has to do with where Europe occupies between America and China. We want to be more independent and China is responding enormously to that.” This is also a factor, according to Hammelburg: “There is a plan to have Rutte go to China by the end of the year. He very much wants to be received by President Xi Jinping and not by Premier Li Qiang. I think they are trying to make an exchange so that Rutte can talk to Xi.’
“A reception from King Willem-Alexander is unusual”
Offensive charm
According to Hammelburg, there are several issues at stake. ASML, theft of intellectual property and human rights. China is mainly trying to improve diplomatic channels with America. There was a meeting between the Secretary of State and Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador in Beijing. They recently had a series of discussions to ease the tension a bit.’ Hammelburg also points out that it is a Chinese charm offensive “to smooth out the rough edges a bit”.
Chinese Vice President Han Zheng is in Europe this week and it is good to receive him today in The Hague. The Netherlands attaches great importance to good relations with China, in which we have open discussions with each other.
After the meetings in the Torentje and – together with the minister… pic.twitter.com/PZwewjRzhF
— Mark Rutte (@MinPres) May 11, 2023
Economics interests
The Netherlands does a lot of trade with China and China would like to keep it that way. “You can say anything about human rights and all that important stuff, but more than half of all Volkswagens are made in China. So we also need to be realistic and list the things that benefit us all and group them together and then have different conversations about all these other issues.”