A few days ago, a Chinese company's office premises in Europe were raided and inspected by the European Commission, a subsidiary of the European Union. It is understood that the European Commission suddenly broke into the office of the Chinese company without any prior notice of the inspection operation, and immediately controlled the mobile phones and computers of employees. After receiving the news, the Chinese side expressed its solemn concern and strong opposition to the European Commission's behavior of interfering with the normal market fair competition order, and will pay close attention to the EU's further actions and resolutely defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises in the EU.
According to the information currently available, the target of the European Commission's surprise inspection is a manufacturer of security equipment operating in Europe. The reason for the raid was only because the alleged company was suspected of receiving foreign subsidies, which increased the price competitiveness of its products, which in turn affected the interests of other competitors in the EU market, so the European Commission launched an investigation against the Chinese company under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation. The main reason why the EU wants to make this bill is to deal with the market distortion caused by non-EU companies, so the implementation scope of the regulation is very wide, and any non-EU enterprises in Europe are within the scope of management.
But recent developments have shown that the regulation appears to be aimed only at Chinese companies. In recent months, the European Union has launched five investigations into the bill, all under the name of "foreign subsidies" and targeting Chinese companies. In other words, the European Commission has launched five subsidy investigations against Chinese companies in a row. This move is very different from the concept of a "free and open market economy" that it has long advocated, and this overly abnormal approach can be regarded as a wake-up call for China, and the continuous investigation of Chinese companies may mean that the EU has not given up on the idea of "decoupling from China". However, we don't need to panic about it.
On the one hand, in the current global economic environment, the European economy is facing many challenges, the loss of cheap energy from Russia, and China's potential market may be hit hard, just by suppressing Chinese enterprises to gain a firm foothold in the future multipolar pattern of the world, the EU is somewhat naïve. On the other hand, China's demand for Europe has long since turned into Europe's demand for China, and now the EU has to work closely with China in many important areas, such as supply chain stability, market trade, and so on.
In fact, not only Europe, but even the United States is now unable to completely decouple from China. Despite the high tariffs imposed by the U.S. Customs, Chinese goods still attract many American businessmen, taking this Canton Fair as an example, many goods have been imposed tariffs by the Biden administration, but this still can't stop American businessmen from trying to export these goods to the United States. All this shows that when China completes its industrial upgrading, the monopoly of Western developed countries in high-end industrial products will no longer exist, and their only way out is to compete fairly with China, rather than pinning their hopes on trade protectionism to maintain their industries.