EU-China Relations in the Era of Great Power Competition: Threats, Dependencies, and Strategic De-Risking.

This article analyses the European Union’s strategy of «de-risking» towards China within the context of great power competition. The EU faces the chal- lenge of balancing economic interdependence with strategic autonomy, particu- larly in critical technologies and supply chains. China’s growing economic and technological clout, coupled with its use of «weaponized interdependence», has underscored vulnerabilities in European critical sectors, prompting Brussels to mitigate risks while preserving engagement. Rather than attributing this reori- entation to a single cause, the article argues that three mutually reinforcing factors interacted to produce a cumulative process of strategic adjustment: the emergence of an alternative, non-liberal model of international order promoted by Xi Jinping, which challenged the normative premises of EU foreign poli- cy; China’s alignment with Russia in the context of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine; and the crisis in transatlantic relations generated by the two Trump administrations. Drawing on the concept of increasing returns and the notion of critical junctures, the article argues that the EU’s engagement paradigm with China constituted a path-dependent equilibrium whose foundations had been eroding since at least 2019, and that the events of 2022-2023 constituted the critical juncture that tipped the system toward a new trajectory. The article ad- dresses how the EU seeks to navigate great power competition, systemic de- pendencies, and technological vulnerabilities, situating these challenges within broader debates on strategic autonomy, normative positioning, and external engagement.