Convention speech: Our relationship with China needs to change

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This is a translation of a speech I gave at the 2023 convention of the Finnish Green Party. The original is available here.


Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has concretely highlighted what excessive dependence on authoritarian states leads to. In a short time, both Finland and the EU had to completely rebuild their Russia policy, and admit to their their previous naive approach towards Russia. Considering how quickly that message seems to have gotten across, at least one question arises for me: Why are we deliberately repeating the same mistakes regarding China?

One example of this quite literally hits close to home: there are plans to built a major concentration of battery manufacturing plants in my hometown of Kotka and its surrounding areas, largely to be built with Chinese money. Despite criticism, local decision-makers have mainly focused on the economic effects of the project, while simultaneously downplaying the risks related to China. However, after Russia started its war of aggression in Ukraine, the city of Kotka cut off its ties to Russia within two weeks of the invasion.

Let's remind people about China's actions: China has not condemned Russia's war of aggression, and it has repeatedly criticized the sanctions against Russia as well as the military aid delivered to Ukraine. At the same time,Hong Kong is witnessing full-scale political purges, Xinjiang is seeing ethnic persecution to a level, multiple countries are describing as a genocide, not to mention the repeated military threats against Taiwan or China aggressively going after dissidents abroad. Honest question, Does this sound like the actions of a trusted partner?

Considering that I'm reading this speech from a Chinese-made tablet, I am aware of the difficulty of the task at hand. But that's just more of a reason reason, to start that work now. Like our relations with Russia, our relations with China must also change. The question is, on whose terms that change will be made.

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