Today, China represents the greatest threat to freedoms across the world. The issue is that in its ferocious push to surpass the US as the world’s number 1 superpower, China is, perhaps, naturally, attempting to export its authoritarianism to other parts of the world. Africa is suffering the most from this because of historic issues around bad leadership on the continent. Whatever the case, the problem has been ending China’s aggression.

Two academics think that the best way to curbing China’s sharp power in its tracks is through a transatlantic partnership between Europe and the United States of America (USA). They, however, note that this would depend on the extent to which Europe is ready to make compromises as it appears to be torn between shared values with USA and enticing trade deals with communist China.

According to the authors,

As China attempts to spread its authoritarian values across the globe, and especially as the competition between China and the United States intensifies, Europe has conspicuously avoided siding with the United States over China, according to Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a senior fellow and director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for A New American Security, and Rachel Rizzo, an adjunct fellow at CNAS based in Berlin.

European leaders remain convinced they can uphold the values and norms they share with Washington while benefiting economically from greater engagement with China. This stance is short-sighted and dangerous—putting liberal democracy in peril. What would it look like for Europe to get off the fence? they ask in POLITICO:

5G is at the forefront of the debate. Europe should follow Japan, Australia and New Zealand’s example and ban high-risk vendors like Huawei from building its 5G infrastructure….

Full story can be found in Democracy Digest. Its an interesting read.