Europe needs a China strategy

The attention of Europe’s foreign and defense policy establishment is rightly focused on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. But it should not lose sight of the immense challenge that China poses. 

In 2019, the EU described China as “a cooperation partner with whom the EU has closely aligned objectives, a negotiating partner with whom the EU needs to find a balance of interests, an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance” – an analysis echoed by the 2022 EU Strategic Compass. In the last three years, however, the balance between partnership, competition, and rivalry has shifted. Systemic rivalry is now at the core of Europe’s interactions with China. 

For many years, European countries – including the UK – and the EU have based their China policy on one correct and two false assumptions. The accurate assessment is that China is an economic juggernaut: its share of world GDP has risen in 40 years from less than 2 percent to almost 18 percent. The false assumptions are, first, that despite its economic importance, China is not politically influential in Europe; and second, that China is a distant country, far removed from European security issues. In fact, as China’s support for Russia in its war against Ukraine has shown, Beijing has become an important factor in Europe’s political and security landscape. 

(WBJ)