Europe urgently needs solidarity on China

Last month, Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier left for his first state visit to China since 2018, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz took off for Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul on a tour meant to reduce German dependence on China. Steinmeier’s office let it be known he was travelling “as a European”.

Earlier in October, Merz and France’s President Emmanuel Macron won the backing of fellow EU leaders for new trade weapons, including one that could, in extreme cases, shut a country out of Europe’s single market. Within a month, Germany was effectively asking Brussels for a sharper sword, courting alternatives to China and sending its head of state to shake hands with President Xi Jinping. Eva Seiwert of the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a Berlin think tank, describes a China policy resting on “two pillars”.

Beijing sees something else. Ding Chun, head of the Centre for European Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University, has warned that the European Union’s China policy could prove “strong at the top but weak at the bottom”. Chinese analysts sort the bloc into protectionists, nervous exporters and governments hunting for Chinese factories. On that reading, Steinmeier’s visit confirmed that German de-risking is a bilateral position, open to renegotiation in the Great Hall of the People.