Climate
was a safe space for the EU and China. Not anymore.
Two of
the world’s biggest polluters want to combat climate change — but neither wants
to give an inch while doing it.
July 24,
2025 6:20 pm CET
By Karl
Mathiesen, Koen Verhelst and Jordyn Dahl
BRUSSELS
― EU leaders winged their way back from Beijing Thursday, clutching a precious
and rare win — a joint agreement with China to fight global warming.
This is a
good thing since the rest of the summit was, quite frankly, a bust.
European
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the climate statement a “big
step forward … our cooperation can set a global benchmark.”
But von
der Leyen’s comments, which focused far more on the tensions that derailed
wider talks on economic cooperation and trade, also highlighted the starkest
threat to the goals laid down in the climate agreement.
That’s
because the source of much of the friction is China’s lead in building clean
technology, especially in solar panels, batteries and electric cars. And its
supply-chain capture of the critical minerals needed to produce the magnets for
wind turbines.
These
technologies underpin the global effort to fight climate change, and to a large
degree, China now offers the cheapest and highest-grade products in many clean
sectors. This is beneficial to the climate, with Chinese exports shaving around
1 percent off global emissions last year.
However,
EU officials see China’s subsidized export model as a direct threat to Europe’s
industrial backbone in chemicals, specialized manufacturing and — of course —
car production.
In
comments reported by the state-owned Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi
Jinping urged the EU to see that “convergent interests are not a threat” and
“boosting competitiveness should not rely on building walls or barriers.”
To date,
climate efforts have been viewed as a safe space for cooperation amid turmoil
for the EU and China. Now, they are also a source of upheaval.
“It’s
expanding more and more into the competition and the rivalry space,” said
Byford Tsang, a senior policy fellow with the Asia program at the European
Council on Foreign Relations.
The
reality on display in Beijing was that both the EU and China want to combat
climate change. But neither wants to give an inch while doing it.
Now more
than ever
The fact
that the climate statement came together at all was seen as cause for champagne
by officials in Brussels.
Teresa
Ribera, the Commission executive vice president who flew to China last week to
broker the climate text, hailed it as “a meaningful step in a world facing
growing geopolitical tensions and climate risks.”
Cooperation
between the EU and China on climate change has taken on new importance since
President Donald Trump yanked the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate change
agreement.
“Together,
the European Union and China must uphold the Paris Agreement. Now more than
ever,” von der Leyen said.
The
message that China and the EU remain committed to both international discussion
and their own domestic efforts was “a significant political signal at a
critical moment,” said Belinda Schäpe, a China policy analyst at the
Finland-based nonprofit Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
By
maintaining a semblance of cooperation and avoiding all-out hostilities, both
China and the EU gain political leverage over the U.S., said François Chimits,
who manages European projects at French think tank Institute Montaigne.
With this
climate statement, “both will hope this contributes to their bargaining
position with Washington, as both still have pending substantial trade
negotiations with the U.S.”
But when
it came to the contents, there was little substance.
“The fact
a climate statement was issued is the news, less on what’s in it,” said Li
Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in
Washington D.C.
Whose
fingerprints?
Despite
featuring the word “cooperation” five times in a 452-word document, the
underlying tensions of the meeting were barely papered over.
In one
section of the climate statement, Beijing and Brussels agreed to speed up the
deployment of renewable energy and “facilitating access to quality green
technologies and products, so that they can be available, affordable and
beneficial for all countries, including the developing countries.”
That
could be read two ways, said Tsang: That both wanted to do more to help the
transition to clean energy in poorer countries, or “China’s view” that the EU
should be willing to open up more to its products, which would make climate
efforts significantly cheaper.
“There’s
a lot of Beijing’s fingerprints on the statement,” said Tsang. Also, he noted,
China was named before the EU throughout. Then there were Chinese Communist
Party-style poetic flourishes, such as the line: “Green is the defining color
of China-EU cooperation.”
Chimits
at Institut Montaigne agreed: “It doesn’t cost much for the Europeans to accept
this — those are only words.”
“Besides,
our current and future production in green industries will only marginally be
aimed at developing economies, because they will be high-value-added products,”
said Chimits. China, he added, also produces those but mostly focuses on
lower-value products, while 85 percent of its car exports go to developing
countries.
China’s
global expansion in EVs means European automakers are now fighting to stay
relevant in nearly every market, including their home turf. While the duties
slapped on made-in-China EVs curtailed some exports of the models to the EU, a
loophole allowing hybrids to enter levy-free has caused Chinese automakers to
shift toward those models instead.
Beijing
has dubbed the surge in exports driven by a domestic price war “involution” — a
phrase von der Leyen mentioned in her speech, saying China agreed to increase
consumption rather than focus on production.
For all
the scolding by Chinese state media, little has been done to curb the practice.
And experts don’t expect that to change.
“Those
sectors facing overcapacity are the ones that China is promoting. Beijing
cannot afford to stifle them in the name of a production cut,” said Mingda Qiu,
a senior analyst at consulting firm Eurasia Group.
For many
in the EU, the idea that the Chinese would be able to flood the global market
with cheaper goods, produced in part as a result of heavy state subsidies, is a
non-starter.
Add to
that China’s crimping of critical minerals exports, which harm efforts to build
clean technology worldwide. On this, von der Leyen told the press that the
meeting had delivered “practical solutions” for resolving bottlenecks quickly
when businesses raised issues.
Given
other geopolitical tensions, such as China’s tacit support for Russia’s war in
Ukraine, some questioned the wisdom of finding accord at all.
“We are
dealing with a country that is fueling the war in Europe, that might become an
EU war or a NATO war,” former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius
Landsbergis told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook.
“And
we’re going there waving the white flag and saying ‘well, let’s talk about
climate’ — it doesn’t look serious, and I don’t think anyone in Beijing is
taking us seriously,” he said.
Gabriel
Gavin contributed reporting from Brussels. This story has been updated.
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