This month alone, Europe has threatened China with a trade “kill switch”, rebuked it in parliament, sent its trade commissioner on a much-trumpeted trip to Beijing and announced three new economic security instruments.
The sequence exposed a European Union that has no clear goal on China, no hierarchy of priorities and has reached no agreement on what it wants from Beijing or on what it would pay to get it.
China has built its European policy around this vacuum. Its method rewards patience: apply pressure, wait for Brussels to react, then offer tiny concessions on Beijing’s terms. European leaders present new instruments as proof of control, while Beijing files each one as information on Europe’s pain threshold. China knows Europe’s price better than Brussels does.
Berlin and Paris opened the sequence. On October 5, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron called for a “kill switch” able to cut a country’s access to the single market.