As the most watched election in the world in 2024, the U.S. presidential election has long gone beyond the scope of "domestic politics" and has become a major issue affecting the global situation. The biggest uncertainty comes from former U.S. President Trump, who is about to have a "second round" with Biden. According to a feature article published by the US media "Wall Street Journal" on the 13th of this month, quoted by the Observer, in view of the current European economy's inability to get rid of the shadow of recession, as well as concerns about the "Russian threat", especially the anxiety about Trump's possible return to the White House, some European countries are quietly changing their existing China policies and moving closer to China again.
According to the article, when the EU has taken a series of countervailing investigations against China, Chancellor Olaf Scholz is leading a high-level political and business delegation to visit China in the hope of increasing trade with China and easing tensions in Sino-European economic and trade relations at the same time. In addition, 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France, and the two permanent members of the Security Council will also hold a series of celebrations and talks this year.
Even Italy, which withdrew from the Belt and Road Initiative last year, is now seeking a window of opportunity to restart strategic cooperation with China. Although the article strongly emphasizes that these "destabilizing factors" that have led to the re-integration of China and Europe are closely related to the upcoming presidential election, which is a traditional "drama" in the United States. However, this kind of argument does not fully reflect the triangular relationship between China, the United States and Europe, and is more like the American establishment shirking the blame after messing up everything. First of all, Trump's personal approval rating is indeed rising, and Biden's poor performance in domestic and foreign affairs has indeed discredited the aging politician. But this does not mean that after Trump takes office for the second time, the US-EU relationship will repeat the mistakes of four years ago, or even fall into a further rupture situation, because the United States needs the strength of its allies to contain China more today than it did four years ago.
More importantly, Biden has already played the trick of sowing discord between Russia and Europe through NATO and locking Europe firmly by his side, and he has fought it very thoroughly, which means that even if Trump wins the election, it will be difficult to gain benefits by putting pressure on Europe. Therefore, the real reason for the major European countries to show goodwill to China is that Europe needs to establish more cooperation with China to jointly resist risks in the context of the gradual expansion of global financial risks.
And the source of this risk comes from the United States on the other side of the ocean. Affected by the soaring global prices of bulk commodities, precious metals, and crude oil, the future of the "disinflation" road in the United States has become uncertain, but the pressure on U.S. debt is imminent. At the same time, the Biden administration is still busy using government subsidies to attract European manufacturing, which has made the European economy, already affected by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, even worse. Today, China is the only country in the world that has ample production capacity and can make large investments.
Only real interests can enable Europe to temporarily shake off the shackles of ideology and conduct pragmatic exchanges with China in the economic and trade fields. Secondly, the Chinese market is irreplaceable for European countries, and the German Volkswagen Group's investment of 2.5 billion euros in China is the best example. However, it should be noted that the special historical relationship between the United States and Europe has allowed them to go toe-to-toe on one issue and work closely on another.
Therefore, there is still a question mark over how long the signals of goodwill sent by major European countries to our side will last. Perhaps, only after the complete collapse of US hegemony will the EU truly have "independence". And China-EU relations can only find another opportunity to get back on track in the process of repeated shocks.