The Brussels-based Europe India Chamber of Commerce (EICC) has accused China of creating "discriminatory" trade barriers, resorting to "forced" technology transfer and intellectual property theft and asked the European Union to confront and counter Beijing’s "disinformation" campaign and expressed displeasure over some EU countries being “soft on doing business” with China.
 
“It is important that the EU strongly confronts China until Beijing changes its behavior on a wide range of well-known and longstanding concerns.
 
“These include discriminatory trade barriers, forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, the militarization of outposts in the South China Sea, pressure on Taiwan, government-sponsored cyber-enabled economic espionage, and until it reduces tension on the Line of Actual Control with India,” EICC Secretary-General: Sunil Prasad said in a strongly worded letter to the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels. 
 
Referring to the proposed Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) between the EU and China, Prasad dubbed the treaty as an “attempt” by China to draw attention away from issues such as its secrecy over the Covid19 outbreak in Wuhan, alleging that CPC’s “massive information control system and opportunism has contributed to the catastrophic spread of Covid 19 globally”.
 
The letter said China was “aggressively pushing for strategic and economic advantage”, and it will use the CAI as an economic tool to enhance its influence in Europe.
 
“Also, the EU cannot afford to ignore the history that China has broken trade and investment promises with many countries,” he said.
 
“The investment treaty with EU will give China and its (Communist Party of China) party apparatus a ‘free pass’ to weaken the role of European democratic norms and overturn vital economic and other components of order from which China itself has benefitted for decades,” he said
 
However, the EICC also described as "disturbing" some EU countries being ”soft on doing business with Beijing”  and some members  “hedging, improving relations with China and pulling their punches inside the EU”.
 
“For the sake of European unity and integrity, this should not be allowed to continue,” he said.
 
Averring that China’s “disinformation campaign” poses new challenges to Europe’s national security interests, Prasad said  “if EU is to turn back this tide of malign mistruths, it must greatly increase its preparedness and efforts to counter it”.
 
(SAM)