Europe Is Welcoming China While Freezing Out America
Ambassador Andrew Bremberg /
For years, European officials have insisted that their increasingly aggressive regulatory posture toward U.S. tech companies reflects a principled stand for digital sovereignty, competition, and consumer protection. But the European Commission’s latest announcement that it is launching yet another investigation aimed squarely at American firms exposes a glaring contradiction: While Brussels makes a political spectacle of policing American innovation, Europe is simultaneously deepening its technological and industrial entanglement with China.
The result is a strategic incoherence that weakens the trans-Atlantic alliance and strengthens the very authoritarian competitor that Europe claims to be “de-risking” from.
The Commission’s press release touts new enforcement actions enforcing the Digital Markets Act, a framework that has overwhelmingly targeted American firms. In practice, the EU has constructed a regulatory regime that treats U.S. tech companies as threats requiring exceptional scrutiny, while Chinese state-influenced companies are welcomed across the continent with open arms, subsidies, and long-term partnerships.
The evidence is overwhelming. Across Europe, governments and industries are signing major deals with Chinese firms in sectors that touch the core of national security and future economic competitiveness. Germany, for example, is expanding cooperation with Chinese autonomous-vehicle makers like QCraft and Momenta, the latter partnering directly with Uber and even Mercedes-Benz on driver-assistance technology. German defense giant Rheinmetall openly touts the importance of buying from China to boost weapons production, bluntly declaring: “We can buy from China, it’s not a problem.” Meanwhile, Chinese electronics brands such as Anker continue gaining prominence at major European tech showcases.
The pattern is the same elsewhere. The Netherlands has returned control of chipmaker Nexperia to its Chinese parent, Wingtech, in order to smooth tensions with Beijing despite U.S. concerns about Chinese access to sensitive semiconductor supply chains. Alibaba Cloud is establishing data centers in Netherlands and France, embedding Chinese infrastructure deeper into Europe’s digital future.
Spain has become one of China’s most enthusiastic European partners. Barcelona has inked agreements with Huawei to develop smart city systems. In July, Spain has awarded Huawei multi-million-euro contracts to manage and store law-enforcement wiretaps, a remarkable decision given ongoing global concerns about Huawei’s direct relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese quantum-computing firms are being invited to set up research centers in Malaga, even as Europe decries the national security risks associated with China’s technological rise.
Greece has allowed Huawei to dominate more than half of its 4G radio networks and continues signing sweeping cooperation agreements spanning AI, smart ports, and green energy. Austria is producing electric vehicles and trucks for Chinese manufacturers. Hungary is expanding nuclear and AI ties with Beijing. Slovakia is welcoming billion-dollar EV investments from Chinese giants similar to the ones blocked in the U.S. while echoing the CCP’s political rhetoric about “non-interference.”
This is not de-risking. This is Europe opening it’s arms to the West’s biggest threat.
What makes Europe’s posture even more perplexing is that the continent does have a reliable, democratic, values-aligned partner: the United States. American companies invest in Europe more than any other region in the world. They comply with European courts. They create hundreds of thousands of European jobs. They build data centers, research hubs, and manufacturing capacity across the EU without geopolitical strings attached.
Yet many European policymakers continue to treat American firms primarily as adversaries to be fined, constrained, or publicly lectured while simultaneously validating China’s long-term strategic ambitions and granting Beijing’s companies deep access to European markets, infrastructure, data, and research ecosystems.
A stable trans-Atlantic tech ecosystem is a geopolitical necessity. The U.S. and Europe share democratic institutions, aligned security interests, deep trade linkages, and mutual defense commitments. China does not. Beijing’s industrial policy is designed explicitly to gain leverage over partners, extract technology, and advance the Chinese Communist Party’s geopolitical aims.
Europe can, and should, regulate tech. It should demand transparency, competition, and data protection. But its policies must be consistent with its strategic interests. Targeting U.S. companies with disproportionate regulatory aggression while embracing Chinese firms in critical sectors is more than hypocrisy. It is self-defeating.
If Europe truly wants digital sovereignty, secure supply chains, resilient infrastructure, and a future grounded in democratic values, it must recognize the obvious: America is its ally. China is not. It is time for Europe to act like it.
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