During the Fourth Plenum of the 19th CPC Central Committee in Beijing, I spoke with senior policymakers, leading analysts, and business figures in Shanghai and Beijing about major domestic and global developments. A shared view emerged: the long-term health of Europe’s industrial economy hinges far more on access to low-cost Russian energy and raw materials than on its ties to China or the United States. Several structural forces now shape global geopolitics and are steadily rewriting the post-war economic and political order.
The first concerns the United States. Its economic model, shaped by deep financialisation and decades of industrial decline, is fundamentally different from that of its G7 peers or China. Unlike post-war Europe or China’s reform-era industrialisation, the US is struggling to rebuild a broad manufacturing base beyond data-centre infrastructure. As a result, Washington leans heavily on global capital inflows and the capture of overseas wealth to sustain its political and economic primacy.
A second dynamic relates to the enduring Anglo-American instinct for balance-of-power politics. From the historical “divide and rule” patterns visible in North America, South Asia and the Middle East, the prevailing assumption remains that continental Europe must never be allowed to consolidate into a fully coherent geopolitical bloc. Ensuring a fragmented Europe preserves strategic advantage for the English-speaking world.
A third argument circulating in Chinese policy circles—one steeped in long-standing Western stereotypes—casts Russia as an underdeveloped, resource-rich, and inherently militarised state that Europe instinctively views as a strategic rival. In this reading, Western rhetoric about defending freedom against autocracy masks a deeper objective: forcing Moscow into compliance or, failing that, allowing internal conflicts among Slavic states to run their course.
A fourth factor centres on China’s rise. As Chinese wealth and global commercial influence expand, the US and its allies are increasingly deploying the leverage of the dollar system to constrain Chinese capital and prevent it from overtaking entrenched Anglo-American and Jewish financial power. Recent moves against Chinese-linked assets—illustrated by the Nexperia case in the Netherlands—are viewed in Beijing as part of this effort.
For both China’s manufacturing-driven economy and the US-dominated financial order, Russia’s resource base remains fundamental. Even Washington depends on Russian uranium. Since Western sanctions over Ukraine, Russian oil and gas have been absorbed into China’s renminbi-based trading framework, reducing Russia’s exposure to the dollar and euro. With energy alternatives available from the Middle East and North America, Beijing sees clear incentives to route its Russian energy imports through RMB settlement, bypassing the need to earn Western currency via exports.
Europe’s industrial core requires reliable, large-scale, and competitively priced power. This is essential not only for traditional heavy industry but also for energy-intensive digital infrastructure, including data-centre development. Nuclear power faces political resistance, leaving pipeline gas—priced far below Middle Eastern or North American alternatives—as the only realistic option. Cutting off Russian supply would lock Europe into structurally higher energy costs, eroding its competitiveness for years.
For many leaders in major EU states, particularly those on the political left, maintaining unity over the Ukraine conflict has become a political imperative. But Donald Trump’s return to the White House, backed by new money from Silicon Valley and old money from Wall Street, points in another direction. He shows little interest in the values-driven transatlantic posture that defined the post-war era. His view is blunt: Russia’s resources should support US economic priorities, not help China expand the global role of the renminbi or monopolise access to discounted energy. He and his supporters argue that prolonged confrontation with both Russia and China risks uncontrollable nuclear escalation rather than the contained rivalry of the Cold War.
Trump’s economic playbook is equally direct: tariffs serve as a revenue tool, squeezing money out of ordinary people; allies are expected to pay more for security guarantees; and domestic capital markets are kept buoyant through asset inflation and speculative booms, including in cryptocurrencies. At the same time, the US defense sector expands into areas linked to critical minerals, capturing new profit streams.
From this vantage point, China’s four decades of reform and growth reveal a strategic failure for the West. The assumption that liberal democracies would automatically outperform China has not held. Rather than confronting their economic shortcomings, Western leaders have turned to distraction tactics, particularly amplifying fears over immigration—illustrated by Chancellor Merz’s recent remarks on public spaces. This rhetoric conveniently obscures the consequences of past Western interventions in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, which, justified in the name of defending freedom and democracy—as now with Ukraine—have instead fuelled displacement and instability.
Compared with the transactional pragmatism shaping Trump-era Washington, policymakers in Brussels, Berlin, Paris and London remain focused on preventing Russian gains in Ukraine and blocking any Chinese move toward reunification with Taiwan (which would let them control 99% of the high-end chip sector). This has driven Europe to distance itself from Chinese manufacturing and market demand, accept structurally higher energy prices, and commit to heavier military spending—all at the cost of industrial competitiveness.
Europe’s strategic priority should now be restoring the competitiveness and innovative capacity of its real economy. Pursuing broad “systemic competition” with Russia—and especially with China—while abandoning affordable Russian energy and world-leading Chinese industrial capabilities amounts to undermining Europe’s own productive base. China and the United States both benefit from Europe’s high-value manufacturing exodus; Russia cannot replace that role. Europe risks inflicting unnecessary damage on itself if it continues down the current path.