On October 20-22, by the banks of Shanghai’s Huangpu River, the 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference returns. Nobel and Turing Award winners will take the stage to discuss the future and trends of technology, and the internet-famous professor who "rescues" people from anxiety and involution—Michael Macfarlane—will hold a live dialogue with Xiang Biao.
Limited seats, first come first served. Let us join together for a sustainable appointment! [Click to register] At a time when Western industrial policy toward China is converging around "de-risking," a clear strategic rift has emerged within Europe. Recently, UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds stated that the UK will not follow the EU in imposing additional tariffs and quota restrictions on Chinese electric vehicles and hybrids, and that the UK’s trade policy toward China will be decided independently based entirely on its own economic interests. Europe appears to be splitting along the English Channel, forming two tendencies: the EU’s "defensive conservatism" and the UK’s "proactive openness" in economic and trade cooperation with China.
For a long time, the policy orientation of European and American countries in economic and trade cooperation with China has been influenced by false smears such as the "China shock" theory, leading them to adopt a conservative stance. The EU is even regarded as a "united front" guarding against Chinese industry. But this UK-EU policy divergence shows that the industrial logic of European countries’ cooperation with China is by no means monolithic. The EU insists on restricting Chinese new energy vehicles, with the core aim of protecting its traditional automotive industrial system. The automotive industrial chains of countries like Germany and France are mature and employment-intensive. Faced with the rapid technological iteration, outstanding cost-effectiveness, and continuously rising market share of Chinese new energy vehicles, the EU seeks to defend its domestic industrial stock through barriers such as additional tariffs, import quotas, and detailed local content rules.
Unlike the EU’s logic of "guarding the gate and setting up defenses," the UK government has chosen proactive openness this time, taking the route of "incremental industrial arbitrage." After "Brexit," the UK automotive industry has increasingly shown a hollowing-out of domestic brands, lacking large-scale independent vehicle manufacturers, and has long faced idle capacity and insufficient industrial investment. At the same time, the UK automotive industry is highly dependent on export trade, and the 2030 ban on the sale of fuel vehicles is forcing the domestic industry to accelerate its new energy transition, urgently needing external capital, technology, and capacity injection to revitalize existing assets and fill industrial shortcomings. Based on different industrial foundations, UK and EU policies toward China are diverging: the EU fears the substitution shock of China’s automotive industry, while the UK hopes for the industrial injection of Chinese capacity. Reynolds’ statement is a rational choice based on its own economic structure.
The UK has clearly captured the opportunities brought by the EU’s restrictions on China: when the EU builds trade walls and raises the threshold for Chinese automakers to enter Europe, the UK proactively opens its door, precisely to absorb the spillover of Chinese new energy industrial investment. This differentiated strategy between the UK and the EU is conducive to Chinese automakers’ industrial cooperation in Europe. Chery is studying the use of Nissan’s idle capacity in Sunderland, MG, BYD, and other Chinese brands are increasing their sales share in the UK, and automakers such as Chery are also adding R&D and cooperation institutions in the UK. These changes are directly related to the market environment in which the UK has not followed the EU in raising tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
Of course, this does not mean the UK has escaped the "de-risking" mindset in industrial cooperation with China. In his statement, Reynolds specifically emphasized that the UK will not become a "backdoor for Chinese electric vehicles to enter the EU single market." Therefore, the UK’s "going its own way" this time may only show that some Western countries are shifting from crude "blocking" of Chinese companies to "taking in China’s high-quality capacity and leveraging it to complete domestic industrial upgrading," completing a transition from passive defense to proactive profit-seeking. From a deeper perspective, the West’s attempt to build a unified industrial barrier against China through ideological alliances and achieve coordinated technological blockade and trade flow restriction will not succeed. The divergence between the UK and the EU on the electric vehicle issue sends an important signal: geopolitical alliances cannot conceal differences in national economic interests, and differences in industrial structure, economic demands, and development stages will inevitably lead to the looseness and wavering of policy alliances toward China. The EU bears the pressure of transforming traditional industries and prioritizes protecting jobs and existing stock; the UK faces the dilemma of industrial hollowing out and prioritizes attracting investment and filling shortcomings. Their interest demands differ, so it is naturally difficult for them to form the same policy.
In fact, today’s Europe no longer has a monolithic China strategy in economic and trade cooperation. On the two sides of the English Channel, one side is the EU’s conservative posture of clinging to traditional industries and passively defending against external competition, while the other is the UK’s proactive posture of relying on open policies and actively seeking global industrial dividends. This policy split is the inevitable result of the resilience of global division of labor and the divergence of national industrial interests. As China’s high-end manufacturing continues to go global, it is an indisputable fact that policy rifts will always exist within Europe. Because the underlying logic of international economic and trade cooperation is national interest, and ideological alliances will ultimately give way to the needs of real development. (The author is a researcher at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.)
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