If China no longer takes Europe seriously, Brussels has itself to blame

The China-EU summit on July 24 confirmed what Beijing and Washington have long surmised: Europe has sidelined itself from great-power competition. After five decades of diplomacy, Brussels and Beijing have never been further apart, exactly as Trump’s wedge intended. Yet the bridge to China wasn’t demolished from abroad. Europe dismantled it, piece by piece, through its own incoherence.

Brussels’ only meaningful gain was a marginal agreement on rare earths. The European Union’s other concerns, ending China’s “systemic distortions and growing manufacturing overcapacity”, were unaddressed. Instead, the EU walked away with hollow climate declarations and technical scraps. This confirms that China sees no need to concede anything substantial: a passivity that exposes Europe’s irrelevance.