Sepia

Archived version

The European Commission is preparing to block Chinese institutions from significant portions of its €95.5 billion ($110 billion) Horizon Europe research program, citing intellectual property risks and links between Chinese universities and Beijing's military.

A draft document for the Horizon Europe "main" work program for 2026/2027 proposes excluding Chinese entities from three of the six research areas: civil security and society; health; and digital, industry and space technologies.

The proposals have not yet been adopted or endorsed by the European Commission, although they are clearly being considered.

The restrictions respond to lack of progress on an EU-China cooperation roadmap established at the 2019 Innovation Cooperation Dialogue. The Commission points to persistent concerns about protecting trade secrets and potential transfer of knowledge to China's military, which it says are "supported rather than deterred" by Beijing's policies.

"In view of the persistent lack of progress in the discussions on the Roadmap and the substantive concerns in relation to the undesired transfer of IP to China supported by both legislative and policy initiatives, cooperation involving entities established in China needs to be calibrated accordingly," it states.

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/41667815

Unpaywalled

[When Spain's King Felipe visits China] Madrid will describe it as a gesture of goodwill and opportunity. In reality, it is a calculated gamble that may cost Spain and Europe far more than it gains. Behind the ceremonial smiles lies a strategic miscalculation, engaging Beijing on Beijing’s terms at a time when the European Union is struggling to build a coherent position on China.

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Spain’s enthusiasm for Chinese capital also reveals a worrying short-sightedness. Madrid faces a large trade deficit with China and believes new projects can offset it. In practice, they seldom do. Chinese investors import their own supply chains, labour, and technology. They create limited local value while drawing European know-how into Chinese networks. Spain risks seeing its renewable energy and manufacturing sectors absorbed into Beijing’s wider strategic designs, leaving it exposed if relations sour or global trade tensions rise.

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When an EU member breaks ranks, it weakens the credibility of that approach and gives China a wedge to exploit divisions inside the bloc. This fragmentation is exactly what Chinese diplomacy aims for. Every bilateral agreement, every royal handshake, chips away at Europe’s collective leverage.

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If Spain chooses to play Beijing’s game, it may soon discover that the price of Chinese goodwill is far higher than it expected.

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Unpaywalled

[When Spain's King Felipe visits China] Madrid will describe it as a gesture of goodwill and opportunity. In reality, it is a calculated gamble that may cost Spain and Europe far more than it gains. Behind the ceremonial smiles lies a strategic miscalculation, engaging Beijing on Beijing’s terms at a time when the European Union is struggling to build a coherent position on China.

...

Spain’s enthusiasm for Chinese capital also reveals a worrying short-sightedness. Madrid faces a large trade deficit with China and believes new projects can offset it. In practice, they seldom do. Chinese investors import their own supply chains, labour, and technology. They create limited local value while drawing European know-how into Chinese networks. Spain risks seeing its renewable energy and manufacturing sectors absorbed into Beijing’s wider strategic designs, leaving it exposed if relations sour or global trade tensions rise.

...

When an EU member breaks ranks, it weakens the credibility of that approach and gives China a wedge to exploit divisions inside the bloc. This fragmentation is exactly what Chinese diplomacy aims for. Every bilateral agreement, every royal handshake, chips away at Europe’s collective leverage.

...

If Spain chooses to play Beijing’s game, it may soon discover that the price of Chinese goodwill is far higher than it expected.

...

Unpaywalled link

The European Commission is looking to go further on its bid to remove Huawei and ZTE telecoms networks from its member states.

Vice President Henna Virkkunen has tabled a proposal to make 2020 5G cybersecurity toolbox recommendations legally binding, and could extend beyond just mobile networks to include fixed-line broadband and fibre networks in EU member countries, too.

The development comes despite many countries having already enacted such changes – Sweden banned Huawei and ZTE from its 5G networks in 2020, the UK has done the same, and Germany plans a removal from its 5G core networks by 2026.

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The UK has framed the removal of Huawei’s technology as a supply chain necessity: “the security of the company’s products… can no longer be managed due to the impact of US sanctions on its supply chain.”

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/41611203

Archived/un-paywalled

The UK has scaled back areas of scientific and technological collaboration with China over heightened security risks, even as a senior minister heaped praise on the “strong scientific nation”.

Lord Patrick Vallance, the science and technology minister, said the UK and China had agreed to work together in the “uncontroversial” areas of health, climate, planetary sciences and agriculture.

His comments followed a meeting on Tuesday with Chen Jiachang, China’s vice-minister for science and technology, in Beijing, where the two countries later signed an updated bilateral agreement on areas of collaboration in science and technology.

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Archived/un-paywalled

The UK has scaled back areas of scientific and technological collaboration with China over heightened security risks, even as a senior minister heaped praise on the “strong scientific nation”.

Lord Patrick Vallance, the science and technology minister, said the UK and China had agreed to work together in the “uncontroversial” areas of health, climate, planetary sciences and agriculture.

His comments followed a meeting on Tuesday with Chen Jiachang, China’s vice-minister for science and technology, in Beijing, where the two countries later signed an updated bilateral agreement on areas of collaboration in science and technology.

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For The Gambia, the stakes of fishing are high. The river Gambia’s nutrient-rich waters, which empty into the Atlantic, have made the former British colony a prime fishing ground. But that abundance has also turned the country into one of Africa’s hotspots for illegal fishing. For years, NGOs and international agencies have called attention to the problem. But vested interests run deep, and the state has struggled to defend its marine resources against the twin pressures of foreign fleets and local corruption.

“These trawlers are a menace. Incidents happen every single day, yet the foreign vessels are never held accountable”, says Omar Gaye, of the Gambian Artisanal Fishermen’s Association. As a fisher himself, he knows the risks firsthand. He had to file a complaint after a trawler from the Majilac fleet tore through his nets one night, leaving them in shreds.

National shipping records confirm that Majilac Fishing Company, which runs the fleet, is controlled by a mix of Chinese shareholders and Gambian nationals.

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The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA) [in The Gambia] remains in force between the European Union and The Gambia. Under the deal, the EU pays The Gambia €550,000 a year in exchange for access by European vessels to catch-limited quotas of high-value species such as tuna and cod. Half of that sum is supposed to be earmarked by the Gambian authorities for developing the fisheries sector. It is intended to pay for monitoring, policy work, and enforcement against illegal fishing.

In practice, however, several trawlers – including the [Chinese] Majilac 3 and Majilac 7 – along with other Chinese-flagged vessels, continue to operate illegally inside the nine-nautical-mile coastal zone reserved for artisanal canoes. At times, they edge to within just three miles of the shore. Satellite data shows that these same trawlers continue to dock at Hansen Seafood’s facilities to this day.

In response to questions for this investigation, [the Spanish multinational company] Congelados Maravilla reiterated that it stopped purchasing seafood from the [Chinese] Majilac trawlers a year ago. Still, the vessels continue to unload their catches at the company’s dock under earlier agreements. The firm insists that all fish landed at their dock is now bought by other wholesalers, and that not a single octopus or cuttlefish is currently purchased by the Spanish group.

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The scale of the problem extends far beyond The Gambia’s shores. Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing accounts for one-fifth of global fish catches, according to the Financial Transparency Coalition. Its market value is estimated at between $10 billion and $23.5 billion annually. West Africa alone is believed to represent roughly 40 percent of this total. The result is a loss of more than $9 billion for countries in the region, in addition to shrinking biodiversity and the depletion of a vital source of protein for West Africans.

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The depletion of West Africa’s fish stocks is pushing the region’s coastal dwellers to seek livelihoods elsewhere. It is fueling migration toward the European Union, most notably the perilous route to the Canary Islands.

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Non-paywalled/archived link

Europe needs to protect key industries from China and avoid becoming dependent on the Asian nation for rare earths and other critical raw materials, according to a French Minister for European affairs Benjamin Haddad..

With Europe under pressure on multiple fronts, including US trade tariffs and Russia’s war on Ukraine, the continent’s leaders should “give themselves the ability to defend their interests,” he said.

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France has long advocated for a robust stance toward Beijing. During a summit last month, President Emmanuel Macron called on EU counterparts to consider using the bloc’s most powerful trade tool against China if they aren’t able to find a resolution to Beijing’s export controls on critical raw materials.

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Macron said governments need to weigh using all options available, including the so-called anti-coercion instrument ... The mechanism, which has never been used, was designed primarily as a deterrent, and if needed, to respond to deliberate coercive actions from third countries that use trade measures as a means to pressure the EU or its members.

Those measures could include tariffs, new taxes on tech companies or targeted curbs on investments in the EU. They could also involve limiting access to certain parts of the common market or restricting Chinese firms from bidding for public contracts in Europe.

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China’s leadership is moving further away from its promises, despite Xi [Jinping]’s claims of ostensible progress, asserting that Chinese women are now “participating in the entire process of national and social governance with unprecedented confidence and vigor,” and positioning them as “protagonists.” The clearest testament to this regression lies in Xi’s addresses to the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) – the official state women’s organization under the Communist Party – in 2013, 2018, and 2023. Across these speeches, Xi consistently advanced patriarchal narratives that cast women primarily as caretakers and moral anchors within the family. Yet his 2023 address marked a further step, urging the cultivation of “a new type of marriage and parenting culture” and the promotion of childbirth, effectively marginalizing women’s professional work and silencing their agency beyond domestic and reproductive roles.

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Women in STEM are celebrated as symbols of national progress [in China], yet this recognition often amounts to ideological instrumentalization. They are valued primarily as a labor force to drive national development goals and to project an image of modernity, progress, and national strength, rather than as fully empowered agents in their own right. Simultaneously, this exists in stark tension with the state’s enduring patriarchal and pro-natalist policies, driven by demographic concerns, which continue to frame women primarily as reproducers and custodians of family life.

This paradox is also exposed by the data which reveals that beneath the state’s celebration of women’s purported achievements in science and technology lies a persistent pattern of underrepresentation, pay disparities, and barriers that limit advancement. Official figures show that nearly 40 million women are employed in science and technology, making up 45.8 percent of China’s STEM workforce. Yet fewer than three million work in research and development.

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In 2022–23, women accounted for 63 percent of all new university entrants, but in elite institutions and STEM-focused majors, male dominance quickly reasserts itself. At the prestigious C9 universities (China’s top tier), female undergraduates make up only 37.7 percent, well below the national average. Disciplinary divides are even starker: physics departments in some universities record male-to-female ratios of 19:1, while women comprise only 25–30 percent of students in computer science and electronic engineering.

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Women also face systemic disadvantages in funding and visibility. They are underrepresented on peer review panels and high-level selection committees, reducing their chances of securing grants. Although women make up roughly half of university instructors, they occupy only one-third of master’s advisor roles and fewer than 17 percent of doctoral advisor positions. Pay disparities are substantial: across sectors and education levels, women earn on average only 71.6 percent of what men do. In high-prestige publishing, the imbalance is also stark: in 2023, only five of 101 corresponding authors with Chinese affiliations in “Nature” were women, highlighting their scarcity in global scientific leadership.

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Yet the challenges women face in STEM are not isolated – they reflect a longer history of gendered constraints and feminist activism in China. As early as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Western feminism, rooted in liberal ideals of individual rights and autonomy, sought to affirm women as rational citizens entitled to legal and political recognition. Chinese feminism, by contrast, emerged in the context of national modernization and liberation from feudalism and imperialism. Following 1949, Mao Zedong’s famous dictum that “women hold up half the sky” reframed empowerment as a collective contribution to socialist nation-building rather than a pursuit of individual rights.

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