The overwhelming majority of Chinese companies based in Europe have experienced stable or increasing revenue growth despite soaring geopolitical tensions between Brussels and Beijing, according to a survey released on Wednesday.
The China Chamber of Commerce to the EU, which represents over a thousand Chinese companies operating across the bloc, reported in its annual poll that 84% of its members enjoyed stable or rising revenue in 2024, while 82% experienced unchanged or increased profits. Only 16% and 19% of firms reported declining revenue and decreasing profits, respectively.
Just over half of Chinese firms identified the EU as a key regional market, the survey noted, while 93% said the bloc’s strategic importance will continue to grow in the future. Just under two thirds of businesses also expect revenue growth to continue while 50% plan to boost investment in the EU.
“The China-EU economic and trade relationship has shown remarkable resilience,” said CCCEU chairman Liu Jiandong. He added that Chinese firms should “continue to deepen their presence in the European market” despite “multiple hurdles,” including increasing obstacles to market access.
The survey comes amid persistent frictions between Brussels and Beijing over China’s enormous global trade surplus – which reached a record $1 trillion last year – and the country’s deepening political and economic ties with Russia following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
It also comes as the European Commission, which oversees EU trade policy, has sought to reduce the bloc’s strategic dependence on China, which is the world’s second-largest economy and the EU’s second-largest trading partner after the US.
Over the past year, the EU executive has imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and steel exports, announced multiple anti-subsidy and anti-dumping probes of Chinese firms, and sought to deepen its cooperation with the US on “economic security” – a move widely perceived as targeting Beijing.
Despite their overall optimism, 90% of the survey’s respondents said the EU’s focus on economic security and “de-risking” from China had negatively impacted their operations, while 81% of firms said the business environment in Europe had become more unpredictable. Four in ten companies also said they had been discriminated against for being Chinese.
‘Caught in the cross-fire’
However, Denis Depoux, global managing director of Roland Berger, a consultancy firm which compiled the survey together with the CCCEU, warned that EU-China ties risk becoming “collateral damage” in the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
Underscoring this point, China’s export curbs on strategically critical rare earths – imposed just days after President Donald Trump’s announcement of “reciprocal tariffs” on US trading partners in April – have alarmed Europe’s long-suffering industries, which are already struggling amid fierce competition from Chinese manufacturers.
China controls 70% of global rare earth mining and 90% of refining capacity, giving the country an effective chokehold over the supply of metals used in numerous advanced technologies, including electric vehicles, radars, computers, and fighter planes.
EU-China tensions were further aggravated last month after US pressure caused the Dutch government to seize control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned firm based in the Netherlands that makes semiconductors essential for Europe’s auto industry.
Beijing quickly retaliated by banning exports from Nexperia’s Chinese subsidiary, which packages and processes the vast majority of the firm’s chips – stoking further panic among European carmakers.
Tensions, however, have eased somewhat in recent weeks. Beijing announced a partial resumption of Nexperia’s chip exports as well as a one-year suspension of some of the most punishing rare earth restrictions following a meeting in late October between Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
Negotiations are also continuing between European and Chinese officials on “improving the implementation” of Beijing’s remaining rare earth restrictions, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said earlier this month.
Depoux, however, warned that the “geopolitical headwinds” affecting EU-China ties “are unlikely to improve down the road.”
“Europe is caught in the cross-fire of the economic war between the US and China, and collateral damage calls for resilience, self-reliance and anti-coercion policy, in a more transactional environment,” he said.
(ow, cs)
