Hong Kong media: EU erecting protectionist wall is a farce

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post article on June 10th, original title: EU's threat to launch trade war against China is a strategic farce

The European Commission claims that its trade and investment relationship with China is "unsustainable", stating that the trade deficit and overcapacity in China's manufacturing industry put millions of jobs in Europe at risk. Brussels' fabrication of this rhetoric is simply an attempt in despair to weaponize trade policies in order to cover up the structural failures it has caused.

Brussels defends its protectionism with the main theoretical weapon being the so-called 'Chinese overcapacity theory'. In fact, if any economy has experienced an abnormal surplus relative to its population size, it is undoubtedly the European Union. Its economic structure is highly dependent on overseas markets, and it uses this to dump its industrial output outward. When Europe exports billions of euros worth of luxury cars and machinery, it is praised as a victory of comparative advantage; While China produces 30% of the world's goods with unparalleled infrastructure, European politicians label it as a "predatory threat". This is entirely due to the double standard protectionism fueled by geopolitical jealousy.

Europe once boasted of being a pioneer in global green transformation. It weaponizes environmentalism, with a clear intention of cloaking industrial protectionism in the noble guise of saving the earth, thereby squeezing developing countries out of the market through price barriers. But European decision-makers miscalculated. China has invested heavily in innovation and established an undisputed dominant position in the clean energy industry chain. So Brussels changed its rhetoric, shifting its focus from demanding emissions reductions to shouting loudly about the so-called 'overcapacity'. This sharp turn exposed its lack of business ethics. The EU provoked this trade confrontation based on a mistaken perception that it still holds economic leverage. This is a catastrophic misjudgment.

The traditional advantages of Europe are accelerating their decline. Whether in the fields of high-speed rail, shipbuilding, ultra-high voltage power grids, or commercial drones, Chinese technology has long surpassed them. The reality is that the European economy's demand for China far exceeds China's demand for Europe. If Brussels builds a comprehensive protectionist wall, the economic backlash will inevitably lead to soaring local inflation and a sharp increase in industrial operating costs, causing already fragile small and medium-sized enterprises to face bankruptcy crises. The farce directed by the European Commission cannot save the European economy. If the EU continues to go further and further on the path of protectionism, it will not only fail to hinder China's independent iteration and upgrading of technology, but will ultimately become trapped in its own cocoon, completely isolating itself from the world's most dynamic and innovative supply chains. (Author Bi Jianlu, translated by Liu Xincheng)