Read part two of the series here.
While U.S. Vice President JD Vance left Europe reeling at the Munich Security Conference last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) met with several European officials on the sidelines. At the U.N. Security Council a few days later, China pushed for greater European involvement in peace negotiations in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Beijing is capitalizing upon U.S. President Donald Trump’s souring of relations with Europe by launching a new charm offensive on the continent. China wants closer economic ties and to counter U.S. influence through strategic engagement with Europe. But will this work? Experts are not so sure.
China’s charm offensive comes after several years of increasingly strained relations with Europe. “Right now, there’s a lot of disillusionment about China,” Frederic Krumbein, a Heinrich Heine visiting professor at the German Academic Exchange Service, told Domino Theory. “I think the watershed moment was … and is still the war against Ukraine.”
China has provided economic, political and military support to Russia during the war, prompting heavy criticism in Europe. But Trump’s hostility toward Europe, and his apparent deference to Russia, has created an opportunity for these dynamics to shift. Some observers have noticed a growing eagerness in Europe to build ties with China, pointing to a speech that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — a staunch critic of China — gave at Davos in January about deepening the EU’s relationship with China and expanding trade. Others have even encouraged political cooperation between Europe and China on Ukraine peace talks to counter Trump and Putin’s rapport.
“I would not discount the talk about working more closely with China as an exaggeration. It’s definitely there, but I think we have yet to see how it plays out,” said Matej Simalcik, executive director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies. “And unfortunately, for now, it seems that the U.S. approach has not been … trying to work with Europeans in a way that would prevent this kind of evolution of relations.”
Simalcik thinks there are two camps emerging in Europe that could contribute to a softened stance on China. One consists of those who were initially skeptical of the hawkish turn toward China in EU policy. The other camp wants to use the threat of cosying up with China as a bargaining chip with the U.S.
But the experts interviewed for this article largely agreed that there are some significant barriers to friendlier Europe-China relations. On the security front, China is not a replacement for the U.S. “Just because the United States has become a less reliable partner … that doesn’t mean that China has become more reliable,” said Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, assistant professor at National Dong Hwa University and an expert in EU-China relations, adding that “[it] is totally up to us to get our house in order.”
France, in particular, has been a prominent advocate for strategic autonomy, or the idea that in the absence of sufficient security guarantees from the U.S., the EU needs to bolster its own defenses. Marc Julienne, director of the Center for Asia Studies at the French Institute of International Relations, hopes that strategic autonomy will now gain momentum in Europe because “we are facing a situation [where] even NATO is in question.”
On trade, there are obstacles to China-Europe cooperation as well. As Julienne explained, China’s economy is currently producing more than the market can absorb, partly because it relies on exports to support economic growth, particularly following the real estate crisis. One significant point of tension is the electric vehicle industry, which Julienne believes is the most important economic and political challenge Europe faces from China: “[China] can kill the European automotive industry, and … it’s not just France and Germany. It concerns almost all European states, because all countries in Europe either produce cars or produce components for the car industry … [This] represents roughly 3 million jobs in Europe.”
As China has conquered market share in the auto sector in Europe, European automakers have lost market share in China. In the absence of further policy adjustments (the EU imposed tariffs of up to 45% on Chinese EVs last October), Krumbien thinks that European auto companies will continue to see declining market share in China. Krumbein suspects that Europe will become more protectionist if the trade imbalance with China deepens.
Additionally, Trump’s new 20% tariff on almost all imports from China presents a significant challenge to its export-driven economy. As China’s largest export destination, the European market is a logical replacement for this loss, which has created a concern among European leaders that China will try to dump its excess in Europe, said Krumbien.
Another obstacle to more Europe-China economic cooperation arises from political misalignments. Julienne highlighted the failure of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment as an example of this. The 400-page agreement was the result of seven years and over 30 rounds of negotiation. It promised to increase market access and standardize rules about transparency of subsidies, forced technology transfer and sustainable development. China and the European Commission finally signed the agreement in 2020, but “it was then frozen by the [EU] Parliament, because there were so many political divergences between China and Europe — on Uyghurs, on Covid-19, on so many things,” said Julienne. The agreement likely won’t be ratified in the future due to the widespread sentiment that small investment benefits should not override profound political differences.
In the absence of a framework to facilitate EU-China investment, EU foreign direct investment into China dropped 29% in 2023. As of 2024, investments into China have become more concentrated — they are being driven mainly by Germany and its automakers. Likewise, Chinese investments into Europe are dwindling and becoming more concentrated in greenfield investments in the battery and EV sectors.
Speaking on France’s experience, Julienne says that the negotiation of economic and political interests in China has shifted. French leaders used to balance human rights concerns against multi-billion-euro contracts, but this era is over. Now France tends to balance human rights concerns against million-euro contracts, which are largely limited to specific sectors (like agriculture) and take months to negotiate. “Before [France’s relationship with China] was plenty of opportunities and a few challenges … and now there are almost no opportunities and only challenges,” said Julienne.
A final factor that will mediate closer economic ties between the EU and China has to do with the EU’s policy of derisking. Introduced by von der Leyen in 2023, the EU has been working to “de-risk” its supply chains without decoupling from China — i.e., reducing outsized dependencies while still emphasizing economic engagement. Indeed, in the same speech where she suggested stronger ties with China at Davos in January, von der Leyen also expressed the EU’s intention to continue derisking its economy. Krumbein thinks that Europe’s experience dealing with its dependence on Russian energy over the past few years has made the EU particularly keen to reduce its dependence on the Chinese economy and avoid “repeating the same mistakes” Europe made with Russia.
If there is any negotiation of trade relations between the EU and China in the coming months and years, Julienne believes that this can and should be done with the understanding that Europe is not in a disadvantageous position vis-a-vis China just because its relationship with the U.S. is under threat — the reality is that China relies on the European market. “I’m not saying that we should cut off ties with China. I think we need to cooperate more, but on an equal footing and be very, very demanding, very firm in what we are asking,” said Julienne, adding that “if we start to engage China with all naivety and without any levers, without any teeth, China will take advantage of that.”
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