Statement on Defending the Transatlantic Community from China’s Malign Influence

Washington, DC and Prague, Czech Republic 

We are the Havel Dialogue.

Inspired by an idea—the vital importance of a civilization’s moral foundation in Vaclav Havel’s 1994 address, the Havel dialogue is an informal group of conservatives from across the transatlantic community bound by a common interest in advancing human flourishing through free, prosperous, secure, and sovereign nations.

Since 2018, the group has periodically held live/virtual meetings to discuss the crucial political, cultural, and security issues of the day in the transatlantic community. Over the years, a number of recurring themes have emerged. Based on that experience, here we list a set of common challenges and responses that the dialogue has identified with the intent that this helps guide participants in their own efforts, encourages collaboration, furthers networking, and new actions and initiatives. One of the key concerns we feel must be addressed is the malicious influence of China in the transatlantic community.

Chinese influence in Europe has risen over the course of the twenty-first century. China’s trade with Europe has risen from about $92 billion in 2020 to over $676 billion in 2024. As a result, China is now a major trading partner for many European countries and under investigation by the European Union for unfair trade practices including dumping.

Though the U.S. remains Europe’s largest trading partner and investor, Chinese investments have cropped up across the continent. From port investments to telecommunications to electric car manufacturing, Chinese investment has surged over the past several decades through both bilateral (such as providing servers for Spanish wiretap recordings) and multilateral arrangements (such as the 16+1).

While China’s infrastructure investment packages can appear fiscally attractive for development, they come at a high cost. Many such projects provide China with concerning sway or disconcerting access. Take Hutchison Port Holdings’ investment in a container terminal at Poland’s Gdynia port. Ostensibly harmless, it just so happens to share the port with a shipyard constructing Polish frigates, and Hutchison exerted their influence in 2024 to block the unloading of U.S. Army equipment at Gdynia due to a protrusion of only a few feet into their zone.

Diplomatically, China has pressured regional states to avoid raising human rights concerns while backing Russia. Beijing’s coercive measures have escalated as high as sanctioning members of the European Parliament for calling out China’s human rights abuses of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Though the sanctions were recently lifted, China’s ongoing no-limits partnership with Russia confirms their diplomatic hostility as Moscow wages a brutal war in Ukraine.

At the Havel Dialogue, we uphold the sovereignty of states and the right of all countries in our hemisphere to make their own decisions regarding economic and diplomatic policy. We further recognize that China is exploiting actual needs of countries in the community that are not being filled by other partners. There is no problem with normal economic engagement with China or any other country, but we must not allow Beijing’s growing presence to foster instability, threaten security, or erode our cherished democratic norms.

To this end, we call upon the community to work together, as well as with extra-regional partners, to develop alternatives to trade and investment dependencies on China. At the same time, we call upon all countries to uphold our fundamental four NOs in their dealings with China:

#1. No strategic dependences. Like most countries in the world today, those in the Western Hemisphere depend on China for many critical goods, from rare earth minerals to pharmaceuticals to manufactured products. They also depend on China’s insatiable market of 1.4 billion people to purchase many of their exports, particularly in agriculture and energy. We call for hemispheric cooperation in overcoming these dependencies through tasks such as exploiting more of the abundant rare earth minerals scattered throughout the hemisphere and developing the region’s manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, no country in the hemisphere should allow itself to become dependent on China for renewable energy sources of which Beijing has a near monopoly.

#2. No military cooperation. Nothing would destabilize the Western Hemisphere more than a Chinese military presence. Such a development would risk moving the center of gravity in U.S.-China strategic competition from East Asia to the Americas, increasing the risk of a great power conflict in our neighborhood for the first time since the colonial era. This is a real threat. Beijing seeks to push the U.S. military out of Asia and, to this end, may attempt to create security challenges Washington must address in its own periphery. It does not need military bases in the region to do this. To preserve regional peace and stability, Western Hemisphere countries should refrain from cooperating with China’s military and end agreements that permit the Chinese military to run satellite stations in regional countries’ territories.

#3. No ignoring spying, intellectual property theft, transnational criminal activity, and destabilizing actions or influence operations. China actively infringes on the sovereignty of countries throughout the world through its espionage activities and by engaging in unsanctioned police operations outside of their jurisdiction that target individuals in other countries. No country can overcome these activities on its own. Cooperation among like-minded countries is essential.

#4. No ignoring human right abuses. China is among the world’s most prolific human rights abusers. It seeks to use its position in the United Nations to erode global human rights norms, which it perceives as a threat to its legitimacy. Western Hemisphere countries must work together to keep the pressure on China over its human rights record and resist pressure and enticements to water down human rights norms in the UN and other international bodies. Doing so may curry favor with Beijing, but any benefit that brings is negated by the negative impacts on the global norms that help undergird the political and social stability of many countries on this hemisphere.

Signed

Kaush Arha, Indo-Pacific Forum

Megi Benia, Former Georgian Diplomat

Adam Bolek, President of the Canada Strong and Free Network

Joseph Bosco

Dr. James Jay Carafano

Ambassador Kelley Currie

Karla Jones Vice President, ALEC Center for International Freedom

Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon, Senior Fellow, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization

Nikola Kedhi, the Albanian Conservative Institute

Nicola Iuvinale, Senior China Fellow, Extreme Radio 

Gabriele Iuvinale, Senior China Fellow, Extreme Radio 

Carlos Augusto Chacón Monsalve, Executive Director, Instituto de Ciencia Política Hernán Echavarría Olózaga

David Oldroyd-Bolt Anglosphere Fellow, The Danube Institute

Ambassador Carla Sands 

Joseph Schneider

Vas Shenoy, Founder, Indo-Mediterranean Initiative

Matt Tyrmand 

Joe Varner,  Senior Fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute