by Andrew Pruden
US-European relations have endured drastic shocks during President Donald Trump’s second term. Tariffs have threatened a trade war, Trump’s overtures to President Vladimir Putin and hostility towards President Volodymyr Zelensky have put him at odds with his European counterparts, and numerous administration figures have expressed frustration at perceived disadvantages in the transatlantic security, economic, and ideological relationship. Many have wondered how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) may take advantage of these disruptions to build closer ties to Europe and further isolate America from its traditional allies. Headlines of “China aims to improve ties with EU amid transatlantic tension,” “China seeks stronger cooperation with Germany and EU,” and “Xi wants EU-China tag team to resist Trump’s trade onslaught” point to broad fears of a Sino-European realignment at the expense of the United States.
Is There an Opening for China?
The recent twin blows of Trump’s threats over Greenland and his decision to engage in a war with Iran without consultations with Europe have compounded these problems. The notion that a NATO member could launch a war to annex the territory of a fellow NATO ally created a crisis within the alliance. Greenlanders “don’t feel safe” in the aftermath of Trump’s threats, says Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen. And while Trump eventually backed down during a speech at Davos in January 2026, comments in April have reopened the possibility of the administration taking action to annex the territory.
The refusal of many NATO members to support America’s war with Iran has led to some of Trump’s harshest criticism and created additional fault lines in the relationship. Despite his consternation at NATO’s refusal to provide basing rights for US aircraft or join in the US blockade of Iran’s ports, Britain, France, Germany, and other key NATO allies have all remained consistent in their view that they were not consulted before the war and it is not their war to fight. It remains to be seen what the long-term consequences of the threats towards Greenland, or the security situation and energy crisis brought about by the Iran War will have on relations between Washington and Brussels.
Regardless of whether relations recover, it is not a zero-sum game in which America’s loss in Europe is automatically China’s gain. Even as current events make it exceedingly unlikely US-European relations will ever approach the same level of trust that has defined ties since 1945, Europeans are moving toward strategic autonomy, rather than overreliance on another great power. Whatever its disagreements with the Trump administration, it is still in Europe’s self-interest to keep its distance from China. Brussels and Beijing have a myriad of diverging economic, ideological, and security differences that will complicate their relationship and provide opportunities for continued US-European cooperation in the future.
Sino-European Relations After the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Russia and China’s professed no-limits partnership in February 2022 and Russia’s subsequent invasion of Ukraine led to an immediate deterioration in Europe’s relations with China. Since the invasion, Europe has repeatedly condemned China’s support for Russia’s actions. The day after the invasion, China abstained in a UN Security Council vote condemning Russia’s belligerence. While reaffirming its support for national sovereignty and peace, China called for “actions to defuse and not add fuel to the fire” by all sides while also alluding to Russian claims that the ultimate guilt rested with Ukraine and the West. Europeans responded to these equivocations and tacit support for Russia’s actions with firm condemnations that tanked relations. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg claimed “that China has been unwilling to condemn Russia’s aggression. And has joined Moscow in questioning the right of nations to choose their own path.”
Europe’s response to Russia’s enablers of its war has put considerable strain on the continent’s ties to China. In 2024, NATO declared China “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine through its so-called ‘no limits’ partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base.” Multiple rounds of EU sanctions have targeted third party countries supporting the Russian war effort, with Chinese defense companies among those affected. After one such package of sanctions in December 2024, which included travel bans and the freezing of Chinese companies’ assets, the Foreign Ministry stated: “China has always opposed unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law and are not authorized by the UN Security Council. We express strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition to the EU’s unreasonable sanctions on Chinese companies.”
Public efforts by China to facilitate peace have also been found wanting by Europeans. On February 24, 2023, China announced its peace plan, titled “China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis.” More a set of policy positions than an explicit plan to end the war, the document included such vague yet uncontroversial statements as “Respecting the sovereignty of all countries,” “Ceasing hostilities,” and “Resuming peace talks.” Beneath these platitudes lay attributes guaranteed to arouse skepticism in the Europeans. To start, the description of the war as the “Ukraine Crisis” fails to acknowledge the dominant role played by Russia. On a more substantive level, China’s suggestion to stop unilateral sanctions serves both its own economic interests and would be wholly beneficial to Russia rather than Ukraine. As any non-unilateral sanctions would require approval by the UN Security Council (in which Russia has a veto), a call to end unilateral sanctions in practical terms is a call to end all sanctions on Russia, to include those by the US and EU targeting Chinese companies.
The response of key European officials demonstrates the lukewarm attitude to this peace plan and the overall poor state of relations. European Commission President Von der Leyen claimed China has already “taken sides” in the war, and NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg stated: “China doesn’t have much credibility because they have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine.” Russia’s invasion and China’s support, while claiming neutrality, strengthened transatlantic ties, reinvigorated NATO, and created further rancor between Brussels and Beijing. However, the Trump administration’s policies since January 2025 have given Chinese officials a ray of hope as they strive to strengthen their position on the European continent.
Sino-European Relations in the Second Trump Administration
China has identified an opportunity to heal its relationship with Europe in light of the tension in transatlantic relations since the start of the second Trump administration. While Vice President Vance spent his speech at the 2025 Munich Security Conference warning that the threat to Europe “is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor . . . [but] the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi extended a hand to Europe. He emphasized China’s willingness “to work with the European side to deepen strategic communication and mutually beneficial cooperation.” Wang Yi’s affirmation that “China has always seen in Europe an important pole in the multipolar world” aligns with Beijing’s long-term desideratum of ending the American unipolar world order and establishing a distributed global balance of power in which the PRC would serve as a major pole. A strengthened Europe, more strategically autonomous from Washington and open to engagement with Beijing, would help facilitate this goal.
China has also seen the diverging US and European attitudes towards Putin and the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to foster disharmony and to project itself as a reasonable international power. As the US conducted negotiations with Russia in Saudi Arabia without European participation, China argued that as “the war is happening on European soil . . . Europe should play an important role in the process.” Such a call for European participation in peace talks is disingenuous to the extent that Chinese support for Russia has helped facilitate the state of war that makes peace talks necessary. Nevertheless, such statements demonstrate an attempt to portray overlapping interests and highlight the important role China assigns Europe in contrast to the dismissive attitude displayed by the Trump administration.
However, China’s public statements have not produced favorable changes in Europe’s sanctions policy. Weeks after Europeans had digested Vice President Vance’s hostile speech at the Munich Security Conference and China’s outstretched hand, the EU still included Chinese companies in a new package of sanctions targeting supporters of Russia’s invasion. China responded tersely, urging “the EU to immediately stop its unfounded accusations and slanders against China, stop shifting responsibility to China, and rescind its decision to include Chinese companies in the sanctions.”
On the economic front, the Trump administration’s tariffs policy appears to provide more room for cooperation between these economic players. In early April 2025, top US trade officials offered to lower EU tariffs in exchange for the bloc cutting ties with China, a suggestion roundly rejected by the European Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič. At the same time Beijing has reached out in an effort to create a shared EU-China front against the administration’s tariffs. In a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Sánchez a week after Trump’s tariff “Liberation Day,” Xi Jinping called for the two states to “fulfill their international responsibilities, jointly safeguard the trend of economic globalization and a fair international trade environment, and jointly resist unilateral and intimidating practices.” Prime Minister Sánchez’ belief that the “complex global landscape makes it necessary for us [Spain] to bet on more dialogue, cooperation, and a strengthening of our relations with other countries” reflects growing sentiment among European leaders put off by America’s belligerent trade policies. However, views from the other side of the political spectrum, like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s call to keep a “pragmatic, constructive, and open approach” to the Trump administration highlights the challenge China faces in creating a shared economic front.
What Does the Future Hold?
In spite of China’s renewed charm offensive and tension in US-European relations, numerous diverging interests still complicate closer ties. Chief among them is China’s continued support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. China has taken no meaningful steps in recent months to pressure Putin to end his war. Any goodwill China derives from calling for Europe’s participation in peace negotiations is largely offset by its continued support, both direct and indirect, of Russia’s war. Chinese imports of Russian crude oil, vital to the funding of its war effort, reached 51.41 million metric tons in March 2024, the largest monthly amount since August 2023. As the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas succinctly put it in April 2025: “Without Chinese support, Russia would not be able to wage war in the amount that they are waging this.” Russia’s war constitutes a fundamental threat to the security order in Europe. So long as China continues to fund that war effort through energy purchases and support Moscow diplomatically, Europe will continue to cast a jaundiced eye at Beijing’s actions.
https://thediplomat.com/2026/05/the-putin-xi-meeting-made-the-trump-xi-summit-look-hollow/.
While the Russo-Chinese partnership is the main obstacle to improved ties, it is not the only factor. Chinese cyber and space activities, and its expanding nuclear capabilities have elicited concern from EU and NATO officials. A NATO statement from 2024 condemned China’s “sustained malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation” and criticized the country’s efforts to “rapidly expand and diversify its nuclear arsenal with more warheads and a larger number of sophisticated delivery systems.” Europe’s interests in stopping disinformation campaigns against its citizens and limiting the threat of nuclear war exist independently of its relationship with the United States and will continue to complicate relations with China regardless of the state of transatlantic ties.
Economic factors also stymie closer European ties with China. Massive Chinese industrial output has threatened vital industries such as automobile manufacturing and forced the EU to take protectionist measures. A ten-fold increase of Chinese made electric vehicles to Europe between 2020 and 2023 threatened the financial viability of one of the region’s most important industries and resulted in EU tariffs in October 2024. The production and export of Chinese wind turbines, telecommunication companies like Huawei, and increasingly advanced semiconductors all threaten domestic European industries. So even as Europe reacts to tariffs from the United States, greater cooperation with Chinese industries could threaten the financial feasibility of some of its paramount economic sectors.
Differences over human rights and ideology will constitute an ongoing point of friction in relations. The 2024 EU Common Foreign and Security Policy report condemned “the government-led system of forced labour and China’s crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.” Though true that western nations’ support for human rights often takes a backseat to security and economic interests, public condemnation of human rights violations could pose a challenge (though not an insurmountable one) to Europe’s relationship with the PRC. Beyond human rights, China has made no effort to hide its desire to adjust the post-World War II world order to account for its new, prominent role, encapsulated by Xi Jinping’s oft-quoted assertion that “the East is rising, the West is declining.” As Europe helped create the liberal international order after 1945 and derives great benefits from the current structures, Chinese efforts to readjust the system have, and will continue to, elicit antipathy in European capitals.
It is appealing to forecast closer Sino-European ties at the moment transatlantic relations are at arguably their lowest point in the post-World War II era. Wavering US support for long held security, ideological, and economic agreements is forcing the region to reevaluate its position and begin to develop an independent defense infrastructure and alternative trade options. Nevertheless, numerous obstacles stand in the way of closer ties with China. Europe is not stuck in a position of equal danger between Scylla and Charybdis. Despite the temporary challenges generated by the Trump administration’s policies, both sides of the Atlantic hold fundamentally similar ideological views, overlapping security interests, and shared economic concerns vis-a-vis China. Though the period of intertwined US-European ties is over with the exit of Joe Biden, a child of the Cold War transatlantic mentality, there still exist substantial areas of commonality that China will struggle to overcome in its quest to pull Europe closer. A Europe striving for strategic autonomy after decades of acquiescence to America is in no rush to treat the emerging Chinese power in a similar way.
Andrew Pruden is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pursuing a master’s degree in Global Studies with a concentration in Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe. He has a bachelor’s in history from the Virginia Military Institute and a master’s in history from the University of Massachusetts-Boston. His areas of focus include US-Russian relations, transatlantic security, and early Cold War US foreign policy. From 2020 to 2024, he served on active duty as an Army intelligence officer and he continues to serve as a captain in the Army Reserves. He intends to pursue a career as a Foreign Service Officer upon completion of his graduate program.