The Rival Who No Longer Plays Catch-Up
For decades, the prevailing Western narrative around Chinese innovation rested on a quiet assumption: China as the world’s factory—an efficient imitator cutting costs and replicating foreign designs. That paradigm is now obsolete. The European Think Tank Network on China (ETNC) leaves no doubt in its 2026 report, Fragmented Europe: Dealing with China as a Technology and Innovation Power. China is no longer merely closing the gap with Europe in critical tech sectors; in several fields, it is setting the pace.
The 15th Five-Year Plan, unveiled in March 2026, accelerates this momentum. Beijing does not leave its industrial policy to chance; it charts a multi-decade strategy backed by a financial commitment that a fragmented European ecosystem cannot easily match. The impact is undeniable. In electric vehicles, Chinese manufacturers combine supply-chain dominance with products that rival European automakers on both price and performance. Meanwhile, in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and biotechnology, the innovation gap has narrowed at a speed that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago.
Yet the most fundamental challenge lies not in finished goods, but in the critical inputs that underpin them. China controls roughly 90% of global rare earth production and around 75% of worldwide lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity. In May 2026, Beijing’s export restrictions on rare earths forced line suspensions at several European automotive parts plants, leaving manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz scrambling to hedge against supply shortfalls. With the EU’s trade deficit with China on track to hit a record high in 2026, this dependency is far from academic—it is operational, and it flares up whenever geopolitical friction dictates.
The Investor Already Inside the Gates
There is an aspect of China’s European footprint that debates over market competition often obscure: Beijing has spent years pouring direct investment into European soil, and that capital shows no sign of ebbing. In a landmark reversal, Chinese foreign direct investment into Europe has outstripped European FDI into China—a historic flow once driven by decades of manufacturing and consumer growth, which many European firms are now quietly reassessing as the business environment in China deteriorates.
In Spain, 97% of Chinese-backed companies operating locally expect to maintain or expand their investments throughout 2026, according to Chinese FDI in Spain: Global Outlook 2026, a report published by KPMG and ICEX-Invest in Spain. Their priorities have shifted sharply from the targets of a decade ago—retail, food, and real estate—towards sustainable mobility, battery technology, renewable energy, and, increasingly, R&D capability. Spain is firmly establishing itself as a European hub for Chinese capital, rather than a mere point of transit.
This on-the-ground reality undermines the neat narrative of China as a purely external threat. When a Chinese enterprise creates jobs in Zaragoza or Valencia, funds research at a local tech hub, or weaves local suppliers into its supply chain, the relationship ceases to be an abstract geopolitical debate—it becomes a concrete economic reality. Navigating it demands far more nuance than broad rallying cries for industrial sovereignty.
The Partner Europe Is Learning to Gauge
The third dimension is perhaps the most uncomfortable, forcing an admission that the rhetoric of strategic competition often glosses over: in the scientific arena, China is a player Europe can neither afford to ignore nor cooperate with unconditionally.
Until 2026, Chinese institutions enjoyed relatively unrestricted access to Horizon Europe, the EU’s €93.5bn flagship research and innovation programme. That open-door policy is now over. The 2026–2027 work programme explicitly bars Chinese entities from sectors deemed critical: artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum technology, biotechnology, healthcare, and civil security. Brussels justifies the crackdown as a necessary defense of European intellectual property against unwanted transfers—risks heightened by Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy, which obliges domestic firms and institutions to share know-how with the armed forces upon request.
Yet this is not a blanket ban, nor is Europe pursuing outright decoupling. The strategy is one of calibrated de-risking: transparency, due diligence, and targeted restrictions rather than systematic exclusion. The rationale is clear: for all the friction it brings, China remains a scientific powerhouse. It is a necessary partner on borderless challenges—climate change, global health, and the energy transition—where joint effort holds genuine value. As an analysis by the CEIAS neatly distils, the goal is not to sever ties, but to re-engineer the relationship around safeguards that were previously absent.
What Businesses Can No Longer Afford to Shelve
In this shifting landscape, European companies are far from passive onlookers. On the ground, it is businesses that determine how geopolitics translates into day-to-day operations: what to procure from China, what to manufacture there, who to partner with in research, and which Chinese investments to accept—and on what terms.
Three strategic moves distinguish the companies navigating this complexity with skill. First is dependency mapping: establishing precisely where—and to what extent—the business is exposed to China across raw materials, components, technologies, or markets, and assessing how easily that exposure can be substituted over the short, medium, or long term. Without that blueprint, any strategy is mere guesswork.
Second is sector- and function-specific differentiation. A company procuring refined lithium has a fundamentally different relationship with China than one collaborating with a Chinese university on bioinformatics, or another receiving Chinese capital to scale up a battery plant. Applying a blanket approach to all three—whether indiscriminate open-door policies or knee-jerk rejection—is not a strategy; it is a failure of leadership.
Third is the development of viable long-term alternatives. Unwinding reliance on China across critical minerals, electronic components, or manufacturing capacity cannot be achieved in a single budget cycle. It demands sustained investment, strategic industrial alliances, and, crucially, the kind of collaboration between business and public research that remains the most underused lever in the European ecosystem.
COMPASS CONCLUSSION
China is not a question with a fixed answer. It is a moving target that shifts by sector, product, operational model, and political context. The companies that have grasped this reality are no longer searching for a single, rigid posture; instead, they are building the capacity to navigate ambiguity on their own strategic terms.
The real risk lies not in engaging with China, but in doing so blindly—without defining the terms, establishing safeguards, or preparing a plan B should conditions shift.
Those who define their relationship with China before geopolitics defines it for them have a strategy. The rest simply have luck.
