This year marks some big numbers for the European Union-China relationship: it is the 50th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relations and the 40th iteration of the annual human rights dialogue, scheduled in Brussels on June 13. However, the number is closer to zero when assessing the progress that these dialogues have delivered for human rights in China.
Human Rights Watch, in a May 15 submission to the EU, reiterated its regret that the EU continues to hold a human rights dialogue with China. Along with other rights organizations, Human Rights Watch has repeatedly criticized the box-ticking nature of the exercise, in which criticism behind closed doors yields no concrete improvements.
For example, despite raising their cases for years, the EU has been unable to obtain the release of Gui Minhai, a Swedish bookseller whom Beijing arbitrarily arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison, or to receive a sign of life from Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur scholar and Sakharov Prize laureate who was sentenced to life in prison for his peaceful activism and has been denied family visits since 2017.
These cases are emblematic of the EU’s failure to meaningfully address Beijing’s repression, which has reached new peaks under Xi Jinping’s rule, including in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong.
Notably, a landmark 2022 report on Xinjiang by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights found Beijing’s abusive policies against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims may amount to “international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” The EU and its member states should press the Chinese government to allow unrestricted access to the UN human rights office for a follow-up visit.
Of course, pressuring the Chinese government for human rights improvements is difficult. But by demoting human rights to a lower-level and private dialogue, the EU and its member states risk complicity in Beijing’s attempts to marginalize and delegitimize human rights. Instead, the EU should be incorporating human rights across all areas of engagement with China, particularly at high-level meetings, to break the artificial silos created by separately addressing unfair trade practices, security concerns, foreign interference, and economic security and sovereignty.
EU leaders should more forcefully raise human rights concerns during the upcoming summit and strategic dialogue, and lay out concrete consequences should Beijing fail to rein in its repression. Not doing so will be at the expense of all people in China
