Stefan Messingschlager
From left to right: António Costa (president of the European Council), Xi Jinping (president of the People’s Republic of China), and Ursula von der Leyen (president of the European Commission) at the China-EU Summit in Beijing, July 24, 2025.Credit: European Council
Europe’s China debate has moved from abstractions to leverage. In the space of a year, Brussels imposed steep countervailing duties on subsidized Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) while Beijing tightened export controls on the minerals that make those cars move. What once passed for risk-free globalization now looks like a contest over chokepoints, standards, and time. The premise that commerce would pacify politics has given way to a sharper reality: interdependence is power, and it can be used. That shift is unmistakable in the EV case and in the curbs on gallium, germanium, and graphite that roiled supply chains across clean tech and chips.
This feature makes a simple claim. Western – especially European – China policy faltered less because engagement was wrong than because it was pursued with naïve assumptions, short horizons, and fragmented execution, while Beijing played a long, sovereignty-first game. The cure is not decoupling or moral grandstanding, but managed interdependence: map and reduce single-point vulnerabilities, protect a narrow slice of dual-use technology with allies, and keep doors open where global goods require cooperation. The European Union has already adjusted its vocabulary – from the 2019 Strategic Outlook that labeled China a partner, competitor, and systemic rival to the 2023 line of “de-risking, not decoupling.” The question now is whether Europe can turn words into habits.
When Trade Became Leverage
For years, the relationship was narrated as mutual gain: lower prices, larger markets, faster diffusion of clean technologies. The past two years punctured that comfort. The European Union moved from warnings to weapons, imposing definitive duties on Chinese-built electric vehicles after finding pervasive state support. Beijing did not leave the signal unanswered. It opened investigations into emblematic European exports, levied duties in politically salient sectors, and kept WTO avenues warm. The result was less a rupture than a stress test: interdependence, when asymmetric, becomes leverage.
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