A Chinese diplomat beams with satisfaction as an unlikely world leader smiles while leafing through a book dedicated to Xi Jinping Thought, plucked from a box on the desk that separates the pair.
The remarkable photo was taken a little over a year ago, in July 2023. The leader is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the diplomat is Cai Run, at that time the Chinese ambassador in Tel Aviv.
It was taken at a moment of relative stability in bilateral relations: Cai was brokering a visit to Beijing by Netanyahu that would have been designed to send a message to US President Joe Biden at a point when his relations with the Israeli government had come under strain.
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Around about the same time, in a previously unreported effort to curry favour in Beijing, Netanyahu had sent a copy of his own memoir – Bibi: My Story – to the Chinese leader.
“If the war hadn’t happened, if October 7 [the Hamas attack on Israel] hadn’t happened, the massacre and the invasion that we’re in, then remember that Netanyahu would have visited China,” said Tuvia Gering, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council specialising in relations between China and Israel.
Cai presents Benjamin Netanyahu a volume dedicated to the Chinese leader’s thoughts. Photo: X/@IsraeliPM alt=Cai presents Benjamin Netanyahu a volume dedicated to the Chinese leader’s thoughts. Photo: X/@IsraeliPM>
Had Netanyahu gone to Beijing, Gering said, Israel’s ties with China would probably have been upgraded to the “strategic” level, as they were with the Palestinian Authority in June of last year, “because they always like to raise and match”.
“Cai Run perhaps could have come out as a hero overseeing this upgrade in relations,” Gering added.
Fast forward to today: China’s relationship with Israel is in tatters after Beijing became the most prominent global supporter of Palestine following the invasion of Gaza.
Cai, meanwhile, landed in Brussels on Friday to take up his post as China’s ambassador to the European Union, charged with recharging Beijing’s standing there.
While the situation is less dramatic than the one he left in Tel Aviv, war will also be top of the agenda of every meeting Cai has as the EU’s efforts to support Ukraine run up against China’s close ties to Moscow.
Last week, EU sanctions envoy David O’Sullivan said “80 per cent of hi-tech parts reach Russia through Chinese territory” and outlined a plan to punish European subsidiaries in Southeast Asia who are flouting EU embargoes by indirectly selling to Russia through Chinese buyers. Beijing has repeatedly denied supplying weapons or parts to either side in the war.
A brewing trade war will also be prominent in Cai’s in-tray, with Beijing working furiously to convince the bloc’s members to vote against tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles while launching retaliatory shots on a near-weekly basis.
Cai’s predecessor Fu Cong had been frustrated in his attempts to bypass European concerns about the relationship with Russia in an effort to resurrect a stalled bilateral investment pact.
He succeeded in keeping Chinese firms off the EU’s sanctions list for several months before the scale of re-exports of blacklisted goods to Russia became too big to ignore.
Fu was also broadly liked in Brussels, where he was seen as gregarious and outgoing, even if he stuck to the party line.
Cai, on the other hand, is regarded as a taciturn operator who was never seen without a translator in Israel and has rarely been heard speaking English in public, despite spending years as a minister councillor at the embassy in Washington.
Gering, who monitored Cai’s time in Tel Aviv closely, said he was a “quintessential diplomat in the new [Xi Jinping] era … first a party man, and then a diplomat”.
“He was able to foster some good ties with the higher ups. I think this will also be his focus in Europe – finding these people that are in positions of power that are relevant to Chinese interests,” Gering said, pointing to Cai’s pre-war efforts to bolster cooperation with tourist groups and start-up incubators.
Brussels has taken a decidedly hawkish turn towards China in recent years, leaving Cai with an uphill challenge in manoeuvring around the city’s power structures.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – who has just started a second five-year term – is pushing the bloc to de-risk the relationship, while her proposed team of commissioners has been instructed to place economic security at the heart of everything they do.
Cai may also struggle to make major inroads with the bloc’s next top diplomat, former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. She is a fierce critic of Russia and many expect her to see ties with Beijing through the lens of its close relations with Moscow.
However, at a closed-door meeting with lawmakers from her centrist Renew political group at the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week, Kallas made clear that China should not be lumped into the same basket as Russia, according to people who were present.
At least one door in Brussels may be a little easier to nudge open: the next European Council President Antonio Costa was the Portuguese leader during Cai’s last stint in Europe as Beijing’s envoy in Lisbon. That period coincided with significant Chinese investment into a broke Portuguese economy.
Cai’s appointment “seems geared toward leveraging [the pair’s] past connection to strengthen ties and foster a more favourable environment for China within the EU”, according to a recent profile of the diplomat from the Mercator Institute of China Studies.
The think tank’s analysts wrote that this may mean he focuses more on the European Council, which represents member states, and individual governments rather than the commission, the bloc’s executive, “which Beijing views as increasingly hostile”.
“His appointment signals Beijing’s intent to explore new personal channels for dialogue with European leaders, despite the overall cooling of EU-China relations,” they added.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
