This week Latika Takes: The Podcast is in The Hague, in the Netherlands, attending the annual conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).
Latika’s guest is Reinhard Bütikofer, one of the co-founding parliamentarians who established the IPAC six years ago.
The former German Greens MEP discusses how the Alliance of parliamentarians from 46 countries formed to develop joint ways for democratic governments to push back against Chinese oversupply of goods like electric cars, overdependence on critical goods, and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) coercive behaviour.
Bütikofer explains the major shift taking place in Germany around the CCP’s attempt to deindustrialise Europe via state-subsidised dominance of manufactured goods and estimates that Europe has just five years left to act or be consigned to an economy ‘Made in China.’
He discusses why some Green movements do not take up the CCP’s human rights abuses as strongly as other progressive parties and calls on Europe to set a price on the consequences if President Xi Jinping moves on Taiwan.
