On January 25th, Finnish Prime Minister Orpo arrived in Beijing, beginning his official visit. As mentioned in the article, Orpo’s visit to China carries political and economic purposes. Politically, this is clearly to appropriately ease relations with China amid friction between the European imperialist bloc and the United States. The Finnish Prime Minister’s visit to China is not an isolated phenomenon; recently, UK Prime Minister Sunak also arrived in Beijing on January 28th, and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau (Canada, though not in Europe, aligns closely with the European imperialist bloc) visited China earlier on January 14th. This indicates that the European imperialist powers intend to continue maintaining their usual stance of relative neutrality in the China-U.S. imperialist rivalry—though slightly leaning towards the U.S. politically, they almost refrain from any actual hostile actions against China, continue colluding with China economically, and occasionally praise China. Therefore, at this moment, the Finnish Prime Minister is representing the entire European imperialist bloc, attempting to use the visit to probe China’s stance on the Taiwan issue.
Economically, the most direct reason for the Finnish Prime Minister’s visit to China is to strengthen cooperation in the energy sector on behalf of the Nordic four countries. The Nordic energy industry, especially the power generation sector, accounts for a significant portion of the Nordic capitalist economy. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland all have large-scale multinational energy monopolies. As a result, the Nordic countries established a loose cross-border electricity cartel called “Nord Pool.” Nord Pool is nominally a Nordic electricity spot trading market, but in reality, it creates conditions for Nordic large-scale power companies to monopolize electricity, as only large power companies can supply large quantities of electricity and manipulate prices arbitrarily on this platform for enormous profits. Although the market also includes countries like Lithuania, Latvia, and some Western European nations, the dominant players and owners of the market remain the major Nordic electricity monopolies.
Due to the demands of Nordic energy monopolies, especially electricity monopolies, to open domestic and international markets to alleviate their electricity surplus crisis, they strongly manipulate their governments under the guise of “environmental protection” by enacting legislation, implementing relevant policies, issuing national orders, etc., to encourage the use of renewable energy or restrict and ban fossil fuels. In 2019, the Finnish parliament passed a bill requiring Finland to fully abandon coal energy by May 2029. Last April, the Finnish government announced it would shut down all coal-fired power plants by that spring to further promote renewable energy adoption. Besides Finland, Norway also encourages electric vehicle adoption by exempting EVs from purchase tax and reducing VAT. In 2016, Norway announced it would achieve 100% electric vehicle adoption nationwide by 2025, and last year, the Norwegian government proudly claimed to have achieved this goal—undoubtedly through increased collusion with China, importing a large number of electric vehicles from China. The Finnish bourgeoisie’s calculations are no different from Norway’s: although Finland lacks a developed industry capable of mass-producing EVs, it hopes to import大量电动汽车 from China to increase electricity consumption, raise electricity prices, and further enrich the insatiable Finnish large power companies. No wonder Finland declared in its press release during this visit to China that “Finnish-Chinese cooperation will focus on green transformation and efforts to address climate change.” Under the guise of “environmental protection,” this business logic and the intensified exploitation of workers in both countries are truly shameless!