The Chinese World Order
After Donald Trump’s repeated questioning of established alliances, territorial statements regarding Greenland and Canada, and threats of punitive tariffs against European and North American partners, a growing sense of unease has spread across the Western world. In several European capitals, the conclusion has been that dependence on the United States must be reduced. Economic and strategic diversification has become a guiding principle, particularly in trade, energy, and industrial supply chains.
From one dependency to another
Recently, however, this pursuit of diversification has taken on a paradoxical turn. While the EU has officially continued to emphasize “de-risking” — reducing vulnerability to Chinese bottlenecks in critical minerals, batteries, and green technologies — practice has pointed in the opposite direction. In late 2025 and early 2026, a series of European heads of government visited Beijing to negotiate deeper cooperation, often accompanied by large business delegations. France’s Emmanuel Macron traveled in December 2025, followed by the UK’s Keir Starmer, Canada’s Mark Carney, Finland’s Petteri Orpo, and Ireland’s Micheál Martin in January 2026. These visits focused on trade, investment, and stabilizing relations, yielding outcomes such as tariff reductions on Chinese electric vehicles and new memoranda of understanding in clean energy. Chinese media portrayed this as a “reset” and a broader reopening, while EU officials in Brussels stressed that the visits were coordinated — yet they clearly illustrate a pragmatic reality: rhetoric about reduced dependence collides with the reality of increased negotiations and agreements.
In this process, China has increasingly emerged as an alternative. New trade agreements, expanded investment, and deeper economic cooperation have been presented as rational countermeasures to American protectionism and political unpredictability. In the short term, this appears pragmatic: China offers an enormous market, substantial capital flows, and a seemingly stable trading partner.
Yet this reorientation entails significant risks. Attempts to reduce one dependency risk replacing it with another — a creeping dependency fundamentally different from the transatlantic one, both in nature and in consequences. Unlike the United States, China is not a politically like-minded partner, but an authoritarian state in which economic relations are largely subordinated to political and strategic objectives. Beyond conventional espionage and information gathering through platforms such as TikTok, China — like Iran — monitors its citizens abroad through transnational repression, where dissidents, Uyghurs, and Hong Kong activists are harassed via threats against relatives in China or direct surveillance. Within China, the population is monitored with technologies whose sophistication far surpasses Big Brother in George Orwell’s dystopian 1984.
This paradox — official “de-risking” alongside high-profile visits and agreements in Beijing — underscores the danger: what begins as short-term hedging against American instability can quickly deepen into structural dependencies that are far harder to unwind. The diplomatic rush to Beijing in recent months demonstrates how Trump’s policies are not only pushing Europe away from the United States, but paradoxically drawing it closer to China, despite warnings about Chinese export controls on rare earths and other critical materials.
This makes dependence on China qualitatively different. Whereas transatlantic cooperation, despite recurring conflicts, rests on shared institutions, legal mechanisms, and common core values, China’s relations with the outside world are characterized by asymmetry, bilateralism, and selective power projection. Economic exchange is rarely neutral; instead, it functions as a tool to reward compliance and punish deviations from China’s core interests.
Against this backdrop, the ongoing shift in Europe’s course appears risky. Reducing vulnerability vis-à-vis the United States by deepening dependence on China does not constitute a return to strategic autonomy, but rather a transition from an unpredictable yet value-based partnership to a more predictable but politically conditional dependency.
For example, France has called for increased Chinese investment in key sectors; Germany saw China become its largest trading partner in 2025 with record export growth; and Canada entered into a limited agreement with China on electric vehicles and canola (rapeseed). At the same time, the United Kingdom and China have strengthened their “strategic partnership” for long-term stability, while the EU has accelerated negotiations with India and Vietnam as alternatives to the instability of U.S. policy. This shift, driven by Trump’s explicit claims over Greenland, proposals to make Canada the 51st state, and threats of punitive tariffs against eight European countries, may seem logical in the short term. But it entails substantial risks, particularly for Western values such as democracy, human rights, and freedom from authoritarian control. China’s sophisticated, low-profile exercise of power — where punishments are rarely explicit but sufficiently clear and severe for those affected that they rarely need to be repeated — risks creating a new, hidden dependency that undermines these principles.
Compliance through exemplary punishment
China’s strategy can be understood through Niccolò Machiavelli’s recommendations in The Prince (1532), according to which power should be exercised with precision to create lasting obedience without constant conflict. Machiavelli advised rulers to be both cunning and strong, avoiding unnecessary wars while always remaining ready to strike with punishments that serve as exemplary warnings. China builds asymmetric dependencies through trade, infrastructure, and technology, where “administrative” measures function as pedagogical examples that spread self-censorship globally. Marxism-Leninism, which remains the official ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, reinforces this strategy through a pragmatic anti-imperialism — directed against American hegemony and Western values — portraying China as the leader of a multipolar world. The goal is a form of revanche, in which the Middle Kingdom regains its rightful place as a gravitational center, while the preservation of the Party’s power and reputation remains the ultimate priority.
An early and classic example is Norway’s experience after the Nobel Committee awarded the 2010 Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Without formal sanctions, invisible trade barriers were imposed on Norwegian salmon through stricter quarantine and inspection measures, resulting in export losses of hundreds of millions of dollars between 2011 and 2013. The message was clear: small states can be turned into warning examples through informal measures.
Similar patterns emerged in the Philippines in 2012 during the territorial dispute at Scarborough Shoal. Philippine bananas and other fruits were held up in Chinese ports under the pretext of pest inspections, severely impacting small farmers and exporters. The measures were swift and politicized, illustrating how maritime territorial disputes can have immediate and tangible economic consequences.
In 2010, China used its dominance over rare earth elements as a signaling weapon against Japan following a trawler incident near the Senkaku Islands. Exports were informally halted for weeks through customs measures, exposing vulnerabilities in Japan’s high-tech supply chains. This was an early demonstration of how control over raw materials can be translated into political pressure.
Between 2016 and 2018, South Korea was subjected to a de facto sanctions campaign after its decision to deploy the U.S. THAAD missile defense system. Group tours from China were suspended, K-pop and television series were withdrawn, and the company Lotte saw hundreds of stores “temporarily” closed for regulatory reasons. Tourism losses were estimated at USD 7–8 billion in 2017, and Lotte later exited China’s retail market altogether. The message was that geopolitical security choices — particularly alignment with the United States — carry a direct cost in market access.
A similar pattern of retaliation is evident in Canada’s case, where Chinese authorities detained two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in December 2018 on espionage charges. They were held for nearly three years — a direct response to Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, at the request of the United States, for alleged violations of Iran sanctions. The two Canadians were released in September 2021, the same day Meng was freed following a deal with the U.S. — a clear case of hostage diplomacy aimed at punishing political decisions. In addition to the detentions, China imposed economic retaliation against Canadian canola and soybeans, measures that were only lifted in 2022.
European companies holding the whip
More recently, following Sweden’s 2020 decision to exclude Huawei and ZTE from its 5G networks on national security grounds, Ericsson’s market share in Chinese 5G procurement fell sharply. From approximately 11 percent in earlier rounds, it dropped to around 2–3 percent in some contracts, contributing to downsizing of Ericsson’s operations in China. Paradoxically, and characteristically, Ericsson and its CEO Börje Ekholm had lobbied against the ban, arguing that free competition should also apply to Huawei in Sweden.
Another European example is Lithuania, which in 2021 allowed the opening of a “Taiwanese Representative Office” in Vilnius — a naming choice China viewed as a violation of the One-China principle, since it used “Taiwan,” the unofficial name of the Republic of China, rather than the more neutral “Taipei,” the name of Taiwan’s capital. Similar offices exist in many countries, including Finland and Sweden, but without using the name “Taiwan.” In response, China not only downgraded diplomatic relations and halted imports of Lithuanian goods, but also pressured European companies — primarily German firms such as Continental — to cease using Lithuanian components in supply chains destined for China. This forced companies to punish their Lithuanian suppliers by breaking contracts, creating a secondary effect that amplified pressure on Lithuania without direct state intervention. The message of this secondary boycott, in which China compelled German firms to act as executioners, was unmistakable: naming choices and diplomatic symbolism carry costs that extend beyond national borders.
Australia, which due to its geography acutely feels increasing Chinese influence in its region, was punished after calling in April 2020 for an independent international investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic, including China’s handling of the outbreak and its origins. Beijing interpreted the call as a direct challenge to its transparency and leadership. In response, China imposed a series of economic reprisals, including high tariffs, import bans, and informal trade barriers targeting key Australian sectors such as coal, wine, beef, barley, cotton, timber, and lobster — measures that cost Australia billions of dollars in export losses. The message was simple: demands for transparency or investigations that challenge China’s narrative come at a high price, and the punishments are designed to create long-term deterrence.
The most recent example is China’s export ban of January 6, 2026, on dual-use goods to Japan, in response to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s November statement describing China’s claims on Taiwan as an “existential threat” to Japan. The ban immediately halted exports of militarily usable components (including rare earths), creating uncertainty in Japanese defense and high-tech supply chains without formally affecting civilian trade — a clear pedagogical punishment intended to deter others.
China’s control over strategic minerals is particularly pronounced. China is estimated to dominate around 70 percent of global mining, perhaps 90 percent of processing, and even more of the production of rare earth elements (REEs), which are essential for high-tech applications ranging from wind turbines to military systems. In April 2025, China imposed export restrictions on seven REEs, escalating in October to products containing Chinese content, in response to U.S. trade policy. This led to factory shutdowns in the United States and temporary tariff suspensions. Control over supply chains creates dependencies that become internalized, without the need for constant reminders. Similar patterns can be seen in export controls on gallium, germanium, and graphite, where licensing requirements and administrative friction fine-tune global industrial policy in response to Western semiconductor controls.
This strategy extends to non-state actors, such as the boycotts of Western companies in 2021 following criticism of the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghur (and other Turkic or Muslim) minorities in Xinjiang. By punishing private actors and forcing them to lobby for China-friendly policies in their home countries, Chinese hegemony is reinforced without direct intervention. For Western values, this poses an existential risk: a shift from dependence on the United States to dependence on China risks undermining democracy and human rights, as China imposes no such requirements but punishes deviations. At a time when Trump is pushing allies away, Europe risks exchanging a (temporarily) erratic hegemon for a sophisticated authoritarian one — a hidden dependency that creeps in through economic integration.
Functional self-censorship
The examples of how China wields its power are numerous, yet limited in number. Only a few clear cases are needed for the rest of the world to adapt to the Chinese order. Unlike Western democracies, China presents itself as a partner that does not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs — such as the imprisonment and torture of dissidents or military invasions of neighboring states. For many governments, this is an extremely attractive form of partnership. China does, however, have red lines that must not be crossed, and it rarely needs to remind others of them. Chinese economic power is a lever that everyone is constantly aware of. Within China, uncomfortable truths such as the Tiananmen Square massacre are censored, but it is not necessary to control media and platforms beyond China’s borders. Self-censorship works perfectly well. We can only speculate about what we might know today about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 or the early spread in Wuhan had China not issued such a clear warning through the Australian case.
In summary, this shift illustrates a timeless principle of political philosophy: real power lies in not having to exercise it constantly. Through discreet but punitive examples, China creates an order in which adaptation and self-censorship become the norm, at the expense of Western values and principles. With strategic resources such as REEs as weapons, this raises fundamental questions about geopolitical balances and the need for genuine diversification beyond dependence on great powers.
To guard against Chinese pressure and outright coercion, it is essential for small and medium-sized countries to coordinate their relations with China. This requires cooperation and a common European China policy, as well as collaboration with other Western democracies — not least with the United States.