Brussels: The European Parliament in Strasbourg on Thursday, 16 September 2021, adopted a report on the EU-China strategy. The report adopted by 570 votes in favor, 61 against and 40 abstentions, expresses grave concern about reports of labor programs in Tibet, calls for free access to Tibetan areas for diplomats and journalists.
More importantly, the report criticizes and calls on the Commission to express its concern over China’s Order No. 15 (Measures for the Administration of Religious clergies), which requires that clergies including Buddhist leaders and Catholic leaders to support CCP leadership. Under this regulation, the Chinese government requires state approval of reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhist Lamas.
China plans to use this authority to control the succession of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and intend to select an imposter who will be loyal to the Chinese Communist Party.
The report outlines six pillars on which the EU should build a new strategy to engage with China: cooperation on global challenges, engagement on international norms and human rights, identifying risks and vulnerabilities, building partnerships with like-minded partners, fostering strategic autonomy and defending European interests and values.
Condemning systemic human rights violations in China, MEPs call for regular EU-China dialogue on human rights and for benchmarks measuring progress to be introduced. Discussions should include human rights violations in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Hong Kong.
This report, among other things, also calls on leaders of the EU and its Member States to decline invitations to the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 unless the human rights situation in China and Hong Kong does not improve and no high-level EU-China Human Rights Summit/Dialogue with a tangible outcome takes place prior to the event.
“We must not be naive when dealing with China. Whilst China is an important trading partner, it is also a systemic rival that poses a challenge to our way of life and the liberal world order. Economic gains should not make us blind to the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitious political agenda, its increasingly assertive foreign policy and its repressions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong” said the rapporteur MEP Hilde Vautmans.
-Report filed by OOT Brussels