he recent salvo of tit-for-tat sanctions between China and the EU over Xinjiang has seemingly brought bilateral relations to the brink. Yet, one would not know by looking at the readout of the recent call between Germany’s Angela Merkel and China’s Xi Jinping, or the trilateral China-France-Germany climate summit. No mention of the sanctions was to be found, nor could a tenser tone be detected.
Similarly, the EU’s leadership duo Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen did not make any statement on the unprecedented escalation. However, even if there appears to be strong support for continuing the status quo, below the surface things appear to be in a state of flux.
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