Europe

True, but his pressure was very hard and that is not the only way to put pressure on someone. I don't think any country should go about it like 'we will make them do what we want because we are big and powerful' but I think in this it would be fair to say 'these are our interests and if you harm them it will make us less willing to do things that are in your interest'.

If they were open about trading with Russia and publicly exclaimed they do not want to be a part in this and choose to trade like they did before the war they would be neutral and EU wouldn't have much to complain about. But that is not the case, they lie about their business with Russia and therefor aren't neutral but 'neutral' if you get what I mean.

China is exporting nuclear power plants to Britain and electric cars to the EU ... China doesn’t need us but we need China.

I have to respectfully disagree with that view.

First of all, the EU is a net exporter of electric cars. In 2024, the bloc exported 830,000 electric vehicles (+9 per cent year-on-year), while imports were at about 680,000 electric cars.

While imports from China remained steady in 2024 at more than 400 000 electric cars (60% of EU imports), the share of Chinese OEMs in imports from China grew to two-thirds in 2024, up from 50% in the previous year. The Chinese OEM Geely accounted for almost 40% of these imports, mainly through its brand Volvo Cars, according to statistics by the IEA.

Within the EU, sales of EVs by Chinese brands count for a small fraction of the total sales volume, with China’s BYD having sold ~7,000 in April 2025, for example (no 10 in the bloc), while market leader VW counts for ~200,000. If the EU would bloc Chinese EV imports, for example, it would hurt China extensively (supposedly more than the EU) as the Chinese economy could not sell its massive (and intentionally created) overcapacity. The EU doesn't need Chinese EVs, but China needs the EU (and other foreign markets) if it wants to maintains its business model.

More importantly, however, there are very strong mutual dependencies between China and the West that have the potential to result in high economic costs for both sides in the event of a geopolitical conflict, may it be caused by Beijing’s ongoing support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, a possible Chinese attack against Taiwan, or other events.

The Western share of Chinese imports is certainly at very high levels for many very important key products such as semiconductors and some machinery.

But the West also accounts for a high share of China's imports of other important goods, such as some foodstuffs, certain raw materials, and also some luxury products like perfume. If we look at China’s import/export ratios, we see it is 65:1 for ores, slag, and ash, and with an import share of almost 50 per cent the West holds a high leverage in this sector.

Chinese import/export ratios for mineral fuels is 8:1 (although the Western share is below 20 per cent here as the majority comes form emerging economies), for meat it is 36:1, for grain 21:1.

China is almost unilaterally dependent on aircraft and spacecraft machinery and parts thereof. Although the import/export ratio is quite low (2:1), the western share of Chinese imports is some 97 percent, according to the German Economic Institute (opens pdf – German source). This category displays China’s highest import dependency on the West, and there is practically no substitution by alternative trading partners and there appears to be only a small degree of substitutability possible through an expansion of domestic production.

[If interested, EU-China and other trade data with relevant links can be found here and using the Trading Economics data posted by @[email protected] in this thread – and many other data bases, but make sure you look at the customs data, not China’s official statistics or something.]

So I don’t say that the EU or the West doesn’t depend on China, but I say that China depends also on the West if we look at the data of hilghly complex global supply chains. There are strong mutual dependencies.

I disagree, especially with US moving away. We certainly need china for a lot of things, but aside the eu is their biggest economic partner and China relies heavily on export for keeping their economy running. Not giving access to western technologies is a way of putting pressure on China, but I think you're right the amount of weight we heavy over China greatly decreased over the last years. But there are many ways in which Europe can put it's weight in the fight and personally I hope they will mainly do so by using soft power. China might not be very susceptible to talks about moral values if you look at how they threat Uyghurs for example, but I think the communist party does know how it feel to be the underdog. What Russia is doing to Ukraine is in no way fair and China has also been treated unfairly many times before in history. Also China wants to expand beyond producing stuff for the rest of the world, and since they are becoming more expensive they might need to move away from production just like the middle-east needs to move away from oil. Just because they are getting more advanced technologically and are getting a stronger military etc, does not mean they don't need friends. Their friendship with Europe is under pressure if they actively support enemies of the EU.