By Josef Gregory Mahoney
Lead: The 25th China-EU Summit in Beijing proved that China — not America — actually shares European values on climate action, multilateralism and economic cooperation. It's time for Europe to stop pretending Washington is a reliable partner.
The 25th China-EU Summit took place in Beijing last week, jointly chaired by Chinese Premier Li Qiang, European Council President Antonio Costa, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Prior to the meeting, breakthroughs were made regarding rare earth export restrictions.
Meeting the European leaders in person, Chinese President Xi Jinping set the tone by emphasizing the need to uphold free trade and multilateralism, promote peace instead of aggression, and address global climate change — all positions embraced by the European Council and European Commission, and all out of step with Washington.
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with President of the European Council Antonio Costa and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, who are in China for the 25th China-EU Summit, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, July 24, 2025. [Photo by Xie Huanchi/Xinhua]
Shortly after the summit, while receiving the credentials of 16 new ambassadors to China in Beijing, President Xi voiced optimism about China's economy, the nation's willingness to share "the dividends of its supersized market," and its determination to "inject more certainty into global economic growth."
Washington must be mentioned because von der Leyen traveled to Scotland to meet with Donald Trump on Sunday, seeking a deal to reduce the damage from his trade war against Europe and the rest of the world. Meanwhile, as the Beijing summit was taking place, Japan and the U.S. reached a new trade agreement that many saw as a template for the U.S. and Europe reaching the same.
While the Japanese business community, including Japanese automakers and the Japan Business Foundation, welcomed the deal publicly, it was simply to acknowledge that a 15% reciprocal tariff is much better than 25%. It's possible President Trump wanted to upstage the China-EU Summit and discourage European concessions to Beijing ahead of his upcoming meetings with von der Leyen.
When news of the U.S.-Japan deal was reported, some Chinese experts worried this would frustrate growing ties between Beijing and Tokyo and perhaps stall the growing momentum for a possible trilateral free trade agreement linking China, Japan and ROK. However, my Japanese sources indicate Tokyo is wary of any deal it strikes with Washington, given Trump's unpredictability — keeping in mind that the new deal is better than none but still bitter — and therefore recognizes the need to rebalance its relationship positively with China. They remain optimistic that China-Japan-ROK FTA will come sooner or later.
The relevance of discussing Japan and the U.S.-Japan deal in tandem with the China-EU Summit should be obvious given what we've already mentioned, but there are a few more points to cover here. The first is to recall the G7 meetings in Hiroshima in 2023, when member countries, following von der Leyen's lead, committed themselves to "de-risking" their economies from China.
On the one hand, "de-risking" was explicitly distinguished from "decoupling." The latter was politically and economically impossible at that moment, but many worried that de-risking was in fact a tactic that would seek to decouple, step by step. This concern grew especially after Washington passed the anti-China CHIPS bill in 2022. The U.S. was also taking an increasingly aggressive position against China by expanding NATO's strategic remit to include China as an adversary and building an "Indo-Pacific NATO" through AUKUS. Meanwhile, the U.S. was also deploying special forces to the Chinese province of Taiwan, among other provocations.
On the other hand, the G7 also made it clear that shared values, above all "democracy vs. authoritarianism," were underpinning their decision to take stronger stands against China. I recall speaking with a scholar who was advising the government in Berlin about these developments. He raised the position also articulated by officials in Beijing: Why would Europe engage in economic conflict with China when it was so detrimental to the European economy? After all, Europe had already suffered the twin blows of the pandemic and the loss of Russian energy.
This photo taken on May 8, 2024 shows a roll-off ceremony of the 6 millionth car produced by BMW Brilliance Automotive (BBA) in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. [Photo by Pan Yulong/Xinhua]
Of course, we all knew that Europe was trapped in NATO's security framework and largely remains so. We also knew that European capitalists were integral to the Western financial system, which perpetuates Western dominance over the Global South and emerging markets. But we recognized that these arrangements were weakening and becoming less reliable, even if the Democrats had won the U.S. presidential election.
Consequently, the scholar in Berlin asserted that Europe would never break from the U.S. because of shared cultural values — values he argued that did not exist with Beijing. But what about the shared values of working together to mitigate climate change, uphold multilateralism, and improve people's social welfare — all key concerns in China and Europe? His answer was a sanctimonious smirk. Then, Trump won the election: Vice President Vance came to Europe, making it clear that "shared values" were nonsense, and Trump launched a trade war against America's European "allies" and even made territorial threats against Canada and Greenland.
What's compelling, of course, is that through it all, China has stood its ground, including in the churning South China Sea and around the Diaoyu Islands, and in the air above and around Taiwan. Biden's foreign policy hit a dead end in 2023, and the Democrats' control of the White House met the same fate in 2024. Since then, NATO and AUKUS have been thrown into doubt, and even the Philippines is rethinking its strategic realignment with Washington, as well as the foolish error of welcoming the hegemon's troops back into its country once again.
Meanwhile, Europe survived the pandemic in part because of China's capacity to restart production of vital products when all others failed. Europe is now mitigating the disaster of losing access to Russian energy after being drawn into a proxy war with Moscow. It is doing so by advancing its green transition with affordable Chinese electric vehicles, solar panels and windmills. Europe is also countering global warming this summer by relying on cooling devices from China.
As European officials move on from their visits to Beijing and Washington, they should quit using "systemic competition" to describe the challenges they face with China, a description that many longtime European diplomats have criticized privately, saying, "First, it isn't true, and second, even if it is, you don't say it." The word that needs to be said, that we need to hear from Europe more than any other, is the same we hear from Japan: rebalance. It's true, of course, that many of China's trading partners want to better balance their trade relations with Beijing, but inasmuch as "de-risking" was a slight against China, rebalancing is a slight against the U.S.
Furthermore, China has made it clear that finding a better balance is a good way forward. Whether we understand this as seeking "harmony" and "reserving differences while emphasizing common ground," one thing is clear: The recent China-EU Summit showed that the two sides do share many common values. Both sides also recognize that avoiding new conflicts and resolving old ones serve their best interests. Of course, Washington may try to spoil such positive developments, but the Europeans should consider the strategic thinking taking hold in Tokyo and figure out how Europe can take best care of its values and interests.
Josef Gregory Mahoney is a professor of politics and international relations and director of the Center for Ecological Civilization at East China Normal University in Shanghai, and a senior research fellow with the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics at Southeast University in Nanjing.