“These days, Europe is losing its significance in global politics and the economy,” a law student shouted from the audience during a political TV talk show broadcast on Shanghai Media Group. “Are the European elite and the public aware of this?”
The remark captures a widespread Chinese perception: Europe suffers from a stagnant economy, a dependent foreign policy and weak defense capabilities. Europeans are seen as still deferential to Washington and, despite intense efforts, unable to stop the war in Ukraine being waged on their doorstep by Russia.
US President Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025 has further strained the transatlantic alliance. His threats — including comments about capturing Greenland and publicly questioning NATO’s cohesion after Europeans declined to join his war on Iran — have widened doubts about US reliability.
Beijing views this split as an opportunity. China’s leaders envision a multipolar future and aim to work with Russia and other states not aligned with the US. Yet Beijing also believes Europe could emerge as an independent pole in a new order.
The reasoning is straightforward. With the UK and France, Europe holds two vetoes on the UN Security Council. The EU single market remains attractive to China’s export-driven economy — especially after the trade war under former US administrations. Chinese leaders see complementary opportunities: Europe has advanced technology and China has the capacity to manufacture at scale and competitive prices. Given political space between Washington and its European partners, Beijing hopes to win the EU as an ally.
Ding Chun, a professor at Fudan University and chair of the Shanghai Institute for European Studies, argues that the US long used its dominance of institutions like the IMF and World Bank to cement a “Washington Consensus” across Latin America and Europe. “But times have changed,” Ding said at a Shanghai forum in mid-April. He added that in Europe many traditional dynamics no longer hold: younger generations are disillusioned with the political establishment, and social media makes election outcomes unpredictable.
China is already challenging the Washington-led order. When Annalena Baerbock, president of the UN General Assembly, visited Beijing on April 29, Foreign Minister Wang Yi used the visit to press for UN institutional reform and a more multipolar world governance structure. “China is happy to support you in your continued leadership,” Wang said. A Foreign Ministry statement framed China as a founding UN member and a permanent Security Council power that upholds multilateralism, international law and the UN’s pillars of peace, development and human rights.
Baerbock, who as Germany’s foreign minister in 2023 once called President Xi Jinping a “dictator,” has been part of the more confrontational European voices toward Beijing — yet her visit signalled China’s intent to court influential European figures even amid tensions.
Vuk Jeremić, a former UN General Assembly president and now a professor at Sciences Po, told the SMG talk show that transatlantic ties were originally forged against the common Soviet threat and that post-Cold War Europe enjoyed decades of prosperity and influence. But crises — the 2007–08 financial collapse, the 2015 migration surge, Brexit, and the instability during Donald Trump’s first presidency — have accumulated and shaken those ties, he said.
Is there a “China option” for Europe? Zhang Weiwei, director of the China Institute at Fudan University, argued that Europe will find it hard to fully decouple from the US. He also said Europe missed opportunities to lead in tech-driven industries of the future — the Industry 4.0 revolution of digital, networked production that originated in Germany. Without a major European presence among the world’s leading internet and high-tech platforms, Zhang warned, US companies dominate European digital infrastructure and big data, while Europe remains wary of Chinese data providers.
“Years ago, people in China believed they could learn from Industry 4.0 in Germany to perfect Chinese industry,” Zhang said. “Today, no one talks about it anymore.” He said China’s pitch to Brussels is pragmatic: become an independent, pragmatic partner of Beijing. That, he argued, is partly a reaction to how Trump has treated Europe since his second-term return to the presidency. Europe, Zhang said, is reassessing its priorities and realizing that some goals are unattainable without economic and technological cooperation with China.
China’s outreach aims to exploit gaps in US-Europe unity and to build economic and institutional ties with Europe that reflect a multipolar world. Whether Europe embraces a closer relationship with Beijing will depend on how it balances economic interests, strategic autonomy, technological sovereignty and security ties with the United States.
This article was translated from German