Opinion

The true battleground in the US-China cold war will be in Europe

The competition between the two giants won’t be in the Global South, where the US has already lost out to China, while in the Indo-Pacific, few nations want to take sides

Rather, it will be in Europe, where the US has most of its allies and China is the largest trading partner

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Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (ret) is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a China Forum expert.

Published: 1:00am, 2 May 2023Updated: 1:52am, 2 May 2023

French president Charles de Gaulle once said: “It will not be any European statesman who will unite Europe: Europe will be united by the Chinese.” He must be turning in his grave to see how Europe has been divided, rather than united, by the Chinese.

On a recent joint visit to China to show European solidarity, president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron, however, seemed poles apart. Von der Leyen criticised China’s friendship with Russia and spoke of a need to “de-risk”. Macron said Europe must avoid being drawn into any US-China conflict over Taiwan, and has maintained that Europe should not become a “vassal”.

Europe’s strategic autonomy lies in how it deals with major powers such as the United States, Russia and China independently, but it won’t happen any time soon. With war raging in Ukraine, Europe is more reliant than ever on America. In reaction to Macron’s comments, US Senator Marco Rubio said if Europe would not pick a side between the US and China over Taiwan, then maybe the US should focus on Taiwan and let the Europeans handle Ukraine themselves.