Political Naivety in Sweden

In the spy thriller Coq Rouge, published in 1986, there’s a scene in a car where an officer of the Swedish Secret Services confronts an Israeli Mossad agent about a sinister assassination plan. Smugly, the officer says: “Now that I have discovered the facts, there can be no “plan Dalet” (1986: 128). The Israeli operative promptly picks up his handgun, points the muzzle toward the shocked officer, and shoots him in the face. That same year, March 28, a woman, stopped by a television crew an hour after the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme in a central Stockholm street, exclaimed in shock: “No, not here—not in Sweden!”.

The above examples taken from one fictional account and one real-life experience, illustrate the element of shock—and perhaps political naivety of Swedes—when the international crashes into the hitherto shielded national and rational lifeworld of Swedish society. These examples also indicate the existence of a Swedish “filter bubble,” long before this notion became commonplace with the advent of the internet and its subsequent degeneration into censorship, polarization, and cancel culture. The political naivety of Swedes has been a recurring trope in Swedish political debate since the mid-1970s.Footnote 1 It is sometimes used to depict the long and uninterrupted rule by the social democratic party (SAP) between 1932 and 1976, sometimes observers apply the term to the Swedish nation in its entirety. Sometimes the sanctity of the welfare state is the target of those who criticize political correctness in general, and sometimes Sweden’s rose-tinted idea of neutrality and non-alignment is lambasted.

As “naivety has frequently been used in recent Swedish debates on commercial and academic cooperation with the People’s Republic of China, an investigation on how the discourse on political naivety in Sweden connects to issues of neutrality and national security is important, as a cold war atmosphere surrounding the US-China rivalry is currently emerging. In this paper I make a preliminary attempt to understand how political naivety has been, and still is, used as a battering ram in Swedish political debate, especially regarding foreign policy and issues of national security and international cooperation. Which actors frame the debate in this way and to what purpose?

Specifically, this chapter sets out to shed light on “Swedish naivety” in relation to China, and the “awakening” to what kind of challenge China under President Xi Jinping presents to Sweden. In the aftermath of the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and China’s continued verbal support for Russia and condemnation of “western values,” this challenge became more acute. To shed light on Sweden-China relations, I account for some of the most vocal actors and forceful policy entrepreneurs, who have been at the frontlines debating political naivety on neutrality, non-alignment, and China as a rising great power. As other authors in this volume, in this process I employ the analytical model of Alan Bloomfield to explain where Sweden is currently positioned along the balancing-hedging-bandwagoning continuum (2016: 262). Both before and after late leader Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policy saw the light of day in 1978, neutral Sweden was firmly located in the “hedging zone.” It is only during the recent decade, under the leadership of the current President Xi Jinping, that Sweden has moved within the subzones of the hedging zone, in the direction of the “balancing zone.”

From Realist to Naïve Neutrality

The idea of political naivety may seem somewhat paradoxical, given the widespread internationalism of Swedish society. From the 1960s solidarity groups formed to support resistance struggles against imperialism, colonialism, and military dictatorships around the world. But this radical idealism and solidarity was constructed from the pinnacle of the modern Swedish welfare state, taking pride in the idea of a very particular Swedish model, “folkhemmet, i.e., “the People’s home,” which is closely entwined with the ideology of the social democratic party (SAP). The perception that outsiders should want to emulate this model, injected confidence in the country. Any outside critique of the model was met with surprise and anger, as the reaction to Susan Sontag’s essay on Sweden (1969). Coupled with the policy of neutrality and non-alignment, the idea of “folkhemmet” created a filter between Swedish people and the miseries of violent conflicts and unstable societies on the outside. The overt idealism and sanctity of the SAP built on what was later termed “credible neutrality”; this, however, is a more recent phenomenon than is often understood. The monarchic neutrality of the eighteenth century that preceded social democratic policy in the twentieth century was more about diplomatic pragmatism than ideology. The official formulation of the policy, coined in 1949, translates as: “non-alignment in peacetime, aiming for neutrality in case of war.”

The Swedish policy of neutrality that kept Sweden outside the two world wars was originally pragmatic and realist in nature, a realist tradition that harks back to its inception, during the reign of king Karl-Johan, in 1814. But the political battle of 1959, in which the conservative leader Jarl Hjalmarsson was accused of being a danger to national security, transformed the hitherto pragmatic doctrine on neutrality into a more rigid policy. Hjalmarsson did not question neutrality but he argued that Sweden shared values with the West and should consider military cooperation with neighboring Norway and Denmark. Hjalmarsson resigned and decades of self-censorship on the neutrality policy followed. Ten years later, the activist foreign policy and internationalism associated with Prime Minister Olof Palme took shape. His morally charged foreign policy imbued neutrality policy with a sense of moral superiority. These changes finally turned Sweden’s former neutrality policy, based on “small-state realism” into “small-state idealism” (Dalsjö 2014: 179). However, in the beginning of the 1990s it was revealed, and officially acknowledged, that during all the decades since Hjalmarsson’s denigration, the government had authorized secret cooperation with NATO and Western forces. This secret was, nonetheless, known in the Soviet Union. In public, the Swedish people were taught the merits of “new” small-state idealist neutrality, while the much older principle of small-state realist neutrality was practiced in the dark. Arguably, behind the lies of the social democratic party (SAP) to the people and its rank and file members, was the fear that open debate on the neutrality policy carried more risks for the SAP than to national security. Yet, without the protection of allies, or an alliance with the West, Sweden was vulnerable to blackmail or territorial encroachments by the Soviet Union. Thus, some sort of covert military cooperation and intelligence sharing on regarding the military strategy of the Soviet Union was deemed necessary. These revelations led center-right mass media to talk of a “myth of neutrality” and right-wing political parties to argue for a new realistic security debate, as “Swedes had been politically naïve” for too long. The Moderate party argued: “Sweden had to become part of Europe” and meet reality outside the confined bubble of SAP-constructed myths of the welfare state and naïve neutrality. Yet, the political elites of both the Moderate party and the SAP had never been naïve, it was a policy of keeping ordinary voters disinformed, an open secret that no party across the political spectrum discussed in earnest.

Arguments to update Swedish foreign policy after the end of the cold war in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, followed on the heels of the transformation of the EC into the European Union and the higher pace of European integration, which also made the policy of neutrality seem outdated. After the breakup of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw pact, the way forward was centered on “security cooperation” between many countries. As leader of the Moderate party, Carl Bildt, strived hard to offer a new security vision for Sweden, which according to Christine Agius “involved essentially ‘abandoning the legacy’ of neutrality in favor greater European security cooperation” (2006: 143).

In retrospect, this argument was a bit premature. Carl Bildt may have embarked on the “Europeanization,” and even propelled the SAP government under Ingvar Carlsson to seek membership in the EC in 1991, after which Bildt as the new prime minister between 1991 and 1994 negotiated the terms of Swedish membership. Carlsson regarded membership as something which could be reconciled with the policy of neutrality. It is important to understand that even if the myth of SAP-constructed neutrality was shattered in light of “the great lie” of neutrality during the cold war, non-alignment, and realist neutrality runs much deeper in Swedish tradition and collective memory.

The impetus from debating the hegemonic social democratic position on neutrality originated from Swedish business interests, energized by new ideological tenets of neoliberalism in the 1970s. But it is only with the beginning of the 1980s that naivety starts to connect with a new discourse on Sweden’s long-standing policy of neutrality in international politics. The confederation of Swedish businesses was very keen to see a closer relationship between the countries of the European Community, as were the liberal-conservative Moderate party (Agius 2006). To observers outside Sweden, the policy of neutrality has been viewed as either cynical (thus not naïve, rather being a rational self-serving construct) or delusional and naïve. Inside Sweden, proponents of neutrality in the social democratic camp have argued that Sweden’s neutrality in the postwar era wasn’t isolationist or inward-looking. To the contrary, social democrats would argue that internationalism and solidarity with the decolonized countries of the developing world have been a hallmark of the agenda of Swedish social democracy.

Yet, as became increasingly evident after the fall of the Soviet Union, Sweden was only rhetorically neutral as security and intelligence operations were routinely conducted and shared with the US and its NATO allies. As eloquently explained by peace researcher and historian Wilheml Agrell, the banner of neutrality was regularly waved in front of a Swedish electorate that were not informed about ongoing secret cooperation with NATO, Thus, the population was naïve, due to lack of available information and purposefully being held in the dark by the political elite (from left to right). More importantly, however, Sweden as a whole was not naïve.

The Development of Swedish Neutrality and Filter Bubbles

It is reasonable to wonder if an ontological filter exists between the realities of Swedish society and the realities of the outside world. Two hundred years of peace and neutrality, since Sweden lost Finland to tsarist Russia in the war of 1809, more than a hundred years since rural poverty led to mass emigration to North America in the 1880s, being protected from the devastation of two world wars, and thereafter existing on the sidelines of the bipolar cold war era between 1948 and 1989 has imparted Swedish society with a “mental shield.” Nevertheless, Swedish neutrality was never the same as pure isolationism and an inward-looking detachment from the woes of the world. Since the 1950s, a combination of export-oriented industry and solidarity with the decolonized and developing parts of world contributed to an internationalist, albeit yet neutral and non-aligned, position. Having a unique position of economic strength—a robust welfare state, and a consensus around social democratic norms centered on a “Swedish model”—Sweden emerged as a gold standard among progressives in both developing and developed countries. Rationality, scientific evidence, a high-trust society, hard engineering skills, the social engineering of a generous welfare state, are all familiar traits and policies associated with Sweden.

Welfare state policies are securely fastened to Swedish political identity, but because of its long history, political, and military neutrality are perhaps even more deeply integrated with the identity of Swedish people. Teaching the tricks of advanced “social engineering” through an effective, and by the people, highly trusted and non-corrupt civil servant corps to outsiders became a Swedish trade mark, not least through development aid. How to become modern became part and parcel became ingrained norms of the Social Democratic Party (SAP) and political culture at large. It was only with the economic crises of the 1970s and with the challenge of neoliberalism that forced changes to economic policy. Another challenge arrived with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and a process of intensified European integration that followed during the 1990s. The readjustment of neutrality policy through, particularly, the hard work by Moderate Party leader Carl Bildt, enabled Sweden to became a member of the EU in 1994, and open and deeper engagement with NATO through the partnership for peace agreement in 1994. On a regular basis Sweden nowadays participates in joint military exercises with NATO countries.

China and Swedish Naivety: From Economic Pragmatism to Dominance Denial

An even larger taboo of Swedish security policy than the policy of neutrality, however, concerns non-alignment and military cooperation with other countries or alliances. This taboo concerns seeking out friendly allies to ensure support and protection, if a foreign power would pose a threat to Sweden’s national interest. It is in this regard that the significant deterioration of Sino-Swedish relations, along with other factors such as the foreign policy of Russia under Vladimir Putin, heralds a new beginning in Swedish defense policy. In 2021, relations between Sweden and China was at an all-time low. The overarching cause for this state of affairs and the deterioration of Sino-Swedish relations is the abduction of Swedish publisher and bookseller Gui Minhai.Footnote 2 While on vacation in Thailand, Chinese intelligence officers on October 17, 2015, forcibly brought Gui from his holiday apartment to China. Three months later he was paraded on China Central Television making a coerced confession, pleading guilty to responsibility for a traffic accident in the past. He was held in extralegal detention in Ningbo until October 2017, when Chinese authorities suddenly notified Sweden’s government that Gui had been released. On January 20, 2018, on a train bound for Beijing, Chinese agents again abducted Gui, this time in front of two Swedish diplomats assigned to bring Gui Minhai to Beijing for a medical examination at the embassy. On February 24, 2020, China’s government announced that Gui Minhai, during a secret trial, had been sentenced to a ten-year prison term. Since then he has been held incommunicado and neither his daughter Angela Gui, nor Swedish authorities know anything about his personal and medical situation. When musing on Sino-Swedish relations and the case of Gui Minhai in an interview in February 2020, the former Chinese ambassador to Sweden, Gui Congyu, said “we treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns.”Footnote 3 During ambassador Gui’s four-year stint in Sweden such quotes of his belligerent rhetoric has taken the political and media elites in Sweden by surprise. His successor has kept a lower profile since his arrival in September 2021.

After all, in the decades after Deng Xiaoping’s opening up to the world in 1978, Swedish diplomats and prime ministers touring China with business delegations often made the point that Sweden in 1950 acknowledged the new People’s Republic of China, one of the first Western liberal-democratic countries to do so (alongside with Switzerland, the subject of Chapter 4 in this volume). This fact was often repeated to Chinese hosts to prove Sweden’s status as a long-time friend of China. However, at the beginning of 2020 relations had soured significantly. The cold war rhetoric that the PRC often accuses the US of, has become a staple good, in the communication coming out of the Chinese embassy in Stockholm. The effect on the political spectrum in Sweden is unique. A parliamentary unity stretches from the Left party to the center-right Moderates and far-right populist Sweden democrats. In a powerful op-ed called “The government is naïve on China,” published on February 27, 2019, the leader of the opposition and conservative party leader, Ulf Kristersson challenged the social democratic government:

We in Sweden cannot be naïve, not about the economy, security, or regarding humanitarian issues. Ultimately, this concerns the future of the liberal-democratic world order, about European competitiveness and about Sweden’s ability to stand up for the rights of Swedish citizens.Footnote 4

In response to questions about Chinese foreign direct investment in critical infrastructure such as wind power in the Arctic part of Sweden, Ibrahim Baylan, the social democratic minister for business, energy, and innovation also argued that “we cannot be naïve.” Obviously it is not just in Sweden that discussions on political naivety and blind faith in modernization theory and democratization in China have taken place. James Mann was among the earliest observers to point out how naïve American China policy had become due to intense business lobbying in Washington DC (2007). More recently long-standing skeptical academics such as Aaron Friedberg has argued that the China policy of Western countries has been a big gamble, which has failed. Yet, even more scathing critique comes from the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who argues that “Under the banner of globalization, China has been able to do everything that the West could not and has been instrumental in helping the democratic states become what they are today. The West’s apparent conflict with the situation in China is because of its refusal to acknowledge its complicity in creating this monstrous regime….” (Goldstein 2019). Moreover, Ai argues that “The real problem comes from the West where there is a complete lack of vision and responsibility, only an interest in profiting from the status quo.” There is a profound element of truth in Ai’s criticism, especially when the western world “suddenly” wakes up to the reality of China’s domestic political development under President Xi Jinping’s rule, and China’s growing influence on global finance and trade and in multilateral institutions. Arguably, recent acknowledgements of Western naivety seems like a tiny fig leaf. Who’s been naive? Are the western publics, governments, market actors, NGOs, thinktanks, or academics all to blame?

Apart from the Gui Minhai affair, other factors and events, some of which are related to his case, have also impacted on debates and public opinion concerning China in Sweden. Most notable of these are the clandestine meeting, at the Sheraton Hotel in Stockholm in January 2019, between Gui Minhai’s daughter Angela Gui, two famous Swedish sinologists, two Chinese businessmen—and Sweden’s former ambassador to China, Anna Lindstedt. Unknown to her employer—the Swedish foreign ministry—and to the government, Lindtstedt arranged the meeting to secure the release of Gui Minhai, through clandestine channels and negotiations. After the meeting, Angela Gui reported about uncomfortable pressure from the Chinese businessmen. As the privateering behavior of ambassador Lindstedt made headlines and became a household story the government’s China strategy was ridiculed and attacked by pundits across the political spectrum. Lindstedt was later put on trial for her secret organizing of a meeting with agents of a foreign power, but was later acquitted in court from the charges.

Dominance Denial: Sweden’s Ban on Huawei from Bidding on the 5G-Networks

In recent years security concerns, often relayed from international and US debates, regarding cyber espionage, acquisitions of cutting-edge start-up companies in the high-tech sector by Chinese companies have required attention from the government. These concerns include the participation of Chinese telecoms Huawei and ZTE in the planned rollout of 5G-networks in Sweden. The Swedish government’s initially cautious and idealistic position of impartial neutrality regarding Chinese high-tech companies, as illustrated by statements from the Swedish telecommunications minister Anders Ygeman, has since shifted remarkably. Apart from the overall shifts of opinion, and covert US pressure, this shift is probably due to the hard position of the Swedish intelligence chief, Klas Friberg, who in blunt terms targeted Chinese companies as a severe security risk to Sweden:

China is one of the greatest threats to Sweden. The Chinese state carries out cyber espionage in order to promote its own economic development and to develop its military capability. It does so through comprehensive intelligence collection and theft of technology, research and development. This is something we have to take into account, as the 5G network is being built. We cannot make compromises when it comes to Sweden’s national security.Footnote 5

On 20 October the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority un-diplomatically cited these security concerns for barring Huawei from bidding on Sweden’s 5G-rollout. It specifically referred to consultations with, and advice from, the Swedish Security Service. On the service’s website it refers to the legal responsibility of the Telecom Authority, as specified in the Regulation on Electronic Communications, it must, consult with the intelligence services and the military.Footnote 6 The information provided by the Security Service indicates that this is a long-standing practice in line with old legislation, when in fact it is a recent amendment to the 2003 law that requires this kind of consultation. The amended law took effect only at the beginning of 2020—after a starkly written statement by Klas Friberg to the government.

However, according to constitutional experts, Friberg’s advice to the Post and Telecoms Authority to ban Huawei from Sweden was unconstitutional, as any head of the civil service must relay advice and decisions to the foreign minister, which Friberg did not. It is a striking how Swedish civil servants recently have become policy entrepreneurs driving policies in solitary. It is certainly a phenomenon that warrants deeper investigation by political scientists. This trend is probably due to government abdication from policy deliberation on acute, and increasingly, key issues of foreign policy, security, and national health. A similar case concerns the powerful appearance of State-epidemiologist Anders Tegnell during the whole COVID-19 pandemic. Once again Swedish exceptionalism, this time evidenced by a “laissez-faire,” anti-lockdown policy, in the face of the novel coronavirus caught worldwide attention. Tegnell has become the symbol and official spokesperson for the Swedish corona strategy and a particular Swedish technocratic way of managing crisis, which differs radically even from its Nordic neighbors. In an interview with Reuters, sounding more like a social democratic politician of yesteryear than a civil servant, Tegnell pronounced to the world: “This is how we do things in Sweden, and there’s huge acceptance for it.”Footnote 7

The bluntness of Sweden’s banning of Huawei, from bidding on 5G-networks in Sweden caught headlines across the world. Much of the reporting quoted the harsh words of Klas Friberg the head of the Security Service. The UK government’s decision, that followed after strong pressure from the US State Secretary Mike Pompeo and Trump administration, was more cushioned and did not refer to China or Huawei by name. It also raised eyebrows among Swedish businesses that could potentially be affected by the Huawei ban. China may be geographically distant from Sweden, but economically it is very close to Swedish business interests, especially the tech-sector. Traditionally export-oriented companies need good relations with China to sustain market access and increasingly partake in technological research and innovation in the PRC. Banning Huawei is therefore a thorny issue for Swedish businesses that are dependent on the China market. They are very sensitive to Chinese government rhetoric on “economic consequences” for Swedish companies due to their government’s behavior. That is the reason why Ericsson’s CEO, Börje Ekholm, in the Chinese tabloid Global Times, argued that it was good that Huawei’s legal complaint regarding disqualification from bidding on 5G-networks would be heard in Swedish courts (as quoted in Financial Times 2020).

Soft-Balancing Against China (and Russia) Nudges Sweden Further Toward Non-alignment

Entrenched identity, old habits, and thinking die hard. Swedish foreign policy on European integration may have changed but deep-seated sentiments and identity remain remarkably embedded in Swedish society and its collective memory. Neutrality and a sense of being insulated and outside of the worries of others have, since the 1980s and the end of the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union, only gradually given way to a Sweden becoming part of Europe and the wider world. Given the rapid deterioration of Sino-Swedish relations and China’s increasingly assertive behavior in the world and vis-à-vis Sweden, could the fraught relationship with the PRC entail a new push for Sweden in the long move away from neutrality in international society that began with the end of the cold war? Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center and the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) show that Swedes hold the most negative views of China in Europe, internationally on par with Japan. In the Pew survey, 85% of Swedes distrust China (Pew Research Center 2020). The UI survey, published in November, 2020, says 79% have a negative perception of China, and 60% of the respondents say their views have worsened over the past three years (Rüligh et al. 2020). Alongside this change in public opinion, there is also an unprecedented unity in parliament, regarding the need to stand up against China.

It seems that history is repeating itself. Over the course of three decades, since the end of the first cold war, the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) has gone from being a wholly confident to a more insecure political party, propelled across uncharted waters by exogenous forces outside Sweden, as well as center-right thinktanks within Sweden and the center-right government of Carl Bildt that ruled between 1991 and 1994. When the formerly EU-skeptic SAP returned to power in 1994, it felt forced to bring Sweden into the European Union (Agius 2006: 161).

As a result, not only has the ideological foundation of SAP changed from formerly “rigid” welfare state provisions as their opponents would have it, to neoliberal policies—but Swedish identity regarding neutrality shifted as well. What in previous decades took years of preparatory processes through dedicated committee work by lawyers, academics, and civil servants to shift policy, was now propelled by partisan views and public opinion. In the current period, fueled by political populism and polarization, these tendencies seem only to have become reinforced. In the case of Sino-Swedish relations, the affair surrounding the imprisonment of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai and its repercussions and impact on public and political opinion, are important issues that have driven the SAP government’s policy orientation. In fact, from the beginning of the affair, when Gui Minhai was abducted in Thailand by Chinese agents in 2015, Sweden adopted a very cautious position, so-called silent diplomatic approach vis-à-vis China, not wishing to jeopardize relations with the rising juggernaut.

Subsequently, however, a chain of events related to this affair compelled former Prime Minister Stefan Lövfén and his successor Magdalena Andersson to become increasingly steadfast and strongminded on China. After a slow start Sweden, over the last five years, has definitely become one of the EU’s most critical voices on China. In fact, Sweden was the only EU country, which voted in favor for sanctions against China at a meeting in Brussels in Spring 2019. This is arguably the effect of pronouncements against Sweden made by officials in Beijing, but the atmosphere has most of all been affected by the belligerent statements by ambassador Gui Congyu. In particular, the Chinese government’s threats about what would happen if culture minister Amanda Lind would participate in a ceremony and award Swedish writer Gui Minhai with a prize celebrating freedom of expression, rallied the public, mass media, and political parties in a unified position vis-a-vis China. After the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and subsequent months of reappraisal of European security, this development toward non-alignment, and a tougher stance toward China was further reinforced. Opinion polls as well as pronouncements by Swedish political parties, including the ruling Social democratic government indicated that an application for NATO membership would be submitted during the course of 2022, as in fact happened in May of the same year.

Thus, the previous cautious position of Sweden has been abandoned, partly due to the Chinese state’s behavior, partly because of shifting attitudes in the US and EU vis-à-vis China’s behaviour toward Taiwan, in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a panel conversation at the inauguration of the Swedish National Competence Center for China on April 27, 2022, Kenneth Forslund of the Social Democratic Party argued that “there can certainly be debate about “the one-China policy’.” Kerstin Lundgren of the Center Party, who had recently visited Taipei, went further in her argument that there was “need for a re-interpretation” of that very policy.Footnote 8 Moreover, in light of Lithuania’s allowing a Taiwanese Representative Office containing the name Taiwan, instead of the usual “Taipei” to be set up in 2021, Lundgren argued that a new “House of Sweden” in Taipei, would likewise need a broader agenda, including political issues, rather than just “promoting business.”Footnote 9 In Bloomfield’s analytical model, Sweden has been firmly positioned in the middle part of the “hedging,” zone, between the “balancing” and “bandwagoningzones, for well over five decades. Due to worsening relations with China in recent years, however, Sweden has moved between the three different subzones within the hedging zone. Thus, Sweden has transitioned from the subzone of “economic pragmatism” which spanned roughly five decades, to the position of “dominance denial,” which lasted between 2015 and 2022. In line with Bloomfield’s model, Sweden has abandoned the “return-maximising-options” of economic pragmatism for the “risk-contingency-options” of “dominance denial” and “soft balancing.” It was after the kidnapping of Swedish publisher Gui Minhai in 2015, Sino-Swedish relations started to significantly deteriorate. This development has, together with other factors in global geopolitics, impacted on Sweden’s long erosion of identity as a neutral country—but also on its tradition of and belief in non-alignment as a bedrock for security and peace. However, the diplomatic spat with China has not taken place in a vacuum. The Russian Federation’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and particularly its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has pushed Sweden even further toward rethinking its over two-centuries long position of non-alignment. As mentioned, opinion polls as well as pronouncements by Swedish political parties, including the ruling Social democratic government, led to an application for NATO membership being submitted in May 2022 with its approval still pending (Pohjanpalo et al. 2022). Sweden’s reappraisal of European security culminated with the government’s report Deterioration of the Security Environment—Implications for Sweden (Government Offices of Sweden 2022), and a formal application of membership in NATO. The report noted that “The Russian-Chinese relationship is characterized by a community of interests and values” (2022: 11). Furthermore, it is argued that “their common ambition to weaken the position of the US and the rest of the West is a unifying factor (2022: 11). The combined thrust of rhetoric, behavior, and shared interests of the world’s two major authoritarian powers China and Russia, manifested through their declaration of “boundless friendship” on February 4, 2022, pushed Sweden further toward the decision to apply for membership in NATO in 2022. Therefore, in a spate of just a couple of months, the Swedish government made a radical turn and moved rapidly toward the subzone of “soft balancing” (still in the hedging zone) vis-à-vis China, by possibly joining NATO and moving out of the hedging zone into the “balancing zone” vis-à-vis a geographically much closer Russia.

Concluding Remarks

In just a couple of months in the Spring of 2022, Sweden’s long-standing policy on non-alignment underwent significant changes. Undoubtedly, there are several factors driving these transformations. Russia’s increasing military activity since the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 is one notable factor, the continued threat of radical Islamic terrorism is another. This paper, however, has attempted to analyze the impact of the diplomacy and behavior of rising China on Sweden’s foreign policy in recent years.

In the eyes of the Swedish public, political parties, and among key actors in the civil service, most notably the security service, China has become a highly hostile nation that is increasingly portrayed as a “threat” to national security. In recent years, Chinese diplomacy and the behavior of the Chinese government has had a profound, and quite unprecedented, effect on political debate in Sweden, across the political landscape.

The result is a seldom witnessed unity, stretching from left to right in parliament. In its political conflict with China, Sweden has more than ever before felt compelled to seek support from like-minded countries in the European Union. As I have outlined in this paper, the seeking of allies has been anathema to the principle of Swedish policy of neutrality for well over two hundred years. The government’s document “Approach to matters relating to China” that was submitted to parliament on September 26, 2019, gives evidence of this shift; one rubric says “The EU – a cornerstone of Sweden’s policy on China.” The document also states that “Sweden contributed to the development” of the joint EU strategy that made clear demands on China. It is clearly stated in this document that a principled defense of the EUs interest and values are needed. Moreover, the document mentions the need for unity: “All EU Member States have a responsibility to maintain and contribute to unity.” Interestingly, this may not be just a shift in policy, but in Swedish identity too. Swedish people are more open to working with like-minded democratic allies vis-à-vis threatening autocratic countries such as China.

As a direct result of China’s foreign policy in Sweden, over just five years Swedes have mover further away on the issue on neutrality than the Bildt government of the beginning of the 1990s could ever dream of. Public opinion and elite views (intellectuals and civil servants) on China have significantly shifted. With this shift of opinions, policies, regulations, and strategies there are indications of a shift also in political identity. Compounded with China’s direct and indirect threats to the Swedish government, this prolonged affair, with currently no end in sight, has nudged the Swedish government to strike a stronger pose vis-à-vis China and seek support from liberal-democratic allies in Europe and beyond. Drivers of this remarkably rapid and important sequence of recalibration are: the abduction of publisher Gui Minhai; ensuing diplomatic conflict with China’s “wolf-warrior diplomacy; increasing attention from Swedish mass media and a massive change in public opinion toward China; center-right politicians doubling down on both “Swedish naivety” and China’s rhetoric; security and defense services’ stern warnings. To these factors, a further “China nudge” was added after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

This sequence of events has led to construction of a coalition of consensus on a new China policy in Sweden. It is similar to the creation of a form of coalition of actors that promoted reversal of Australia’s China policy in 2017 (Chubb, 2022). In Australia one of the triggering events, concerned a labor politician who, in exchange for financial campaign support, defended China’s position in its territorial dispute with other countries in the South China Sea. Therefore it becomes clear how, in both Sweden as well as in Australia, a triggering event, followed by diplomatic frictions with China and an ensuing media storm and negative public opinion, made a reversal of previous policies, easier. Compared to Sweden, however, civil servants within the Australian intelligence agencies raised the alarm about China’s more assertive behavior much earlier. In Sweden, negative public opinion vis-à-vis China was very much China’s own doing, fueled by its wolf warrior ambassador Gui Congyu. Thus, authoritarian China, together with its increasingly belligerent partner Russia, is a contributing factor that has nudged “naïve” Sweden further away from neutrality, onto the trajectory of non-alignment and becoming a full member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.