Within a few days, more than 600 Chinese enterprises will be "racked"!The EU has broken the pots and is ready to tear the face with China?
In recent days, the EU has made a series of decisions and hundreds of Chinese companies have been "listed", and China-EU relations are facing challenges.
On October 17th, the European Union first threw out its first sanction-imposing final anti-dumping duties on Chinese steel crawler shoes.
On the 21st, two measures were announced: starting an anti-dumping review of Chinese citrus fruits, requiring Chinese pea protein imports to be registered first.
On the 22nd, two regulations were issued in one breath, headless screws to impose anti-dumping duties, and the range of anti-dumping bicycles was directly expanded to many Southeast Asian countries.
In just five days, about 629 Chinese companies were involved.
Such intensity is rare in China-EU trade in recent years. Is the EU determined to tear its face with China?
Let's first look at the areas of sanctions. There are actually hidden secrets.
The first one is steel track shoes.
China's steel shoes account for 52% of the global engineering machinery accessories market, and European enterprises want to grab back, it is difficult.
The bicycle industry is also typical.
Ten years ago, there were 12 mainstream bicycle manufacturers in Germany, now there are only five, with domestic production capacity reduced by more than 30%.
But Chinese bicycles in the EU market, from a few dozen euros to a few hundred euros mountain car, accounted for 40% of the shelves.
From frames to accessories, the cost of the whole industrial chain of Chinese bicycle enterprises is 25% lower than that of Europe. European consumers vote with their feet, so they naturally choose the cost-effective ones.
More paradoxically are pea protein and citrus.
The EU, on the one hand, sets limits on these agricultural products, but on the other hand, can’t get away from China’s key materials.
Speaking of rare earth, the Volkswagen family, each month to import 2,000 tons of rare earth permanent magnetic materials from China, without this, the engine of the new energy vehicle can not turn.
This operation of "depending on one side of pressure" seems to have a bit of "double target".
In recent years, the von der Leyen administration has always called for "European strategic independence", but its actions have followed the United States in imposing restrictions on China.
It was clearly stated in the leaked documents from previous internal EU meetings that representatives of German car companies opposed sanctions on the spot. Their factories in China import nearly one million sets of parts and components from China every year. Sanctions are tantamount to cutting off their own supply.
However, Eastern European countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic keep echoing, on the grounds that they "should keep pace with the United States".
After all, the European Parliamentary elections in 2025 are approaching, and some politicians want to rely on "strong against China" to make favor of populist voters, to shift the contradiction of domestic inflation and high energy prices.
But can this political speculation really save the European industry?
In fact, a lot of Chinese companies have been prepared before the European big bang came out.
Some bicycle companies' factories in Thailand started construction last year. Now Thailand's production lines can meet the ASEAN and Middle East markets, and the proportion of exports to Europe has dropped from 60% to 35%, which is basically unaffected.
Zhejiang's 24 headless screw enterprises were more proactive, not waiting for the final ruling to land, and jointly sought international law to participate in the hearing, while the group went to South America to talk to dealers, this year to Brazil exports have increased by 40%, reimbursing the losses of sanctions.
On the contrary, it was local European companies that suffered.
A German excavator manufacturer has calculated a bill, after the price of steel shoes increased, the cost of a single machine increased by € 1,20,000.
In desperation, we can only transfer some production lines to China.
The reason is very real, "the supply chain here is more complete and the cost is lower".
More importantly, China's counter-reaction has never been "empty", has been warned early, and has been precisely grounded.
The Ministry of Commerce has long made it clear that it will "take all necessary measures to safeguard the rights and interests of enterprises".
Since July 5, China has imposed an anti-dumping duty on EU brands, directly hitting France’s “pain spot”.
In a report released last month by the French Cognac Association, exports to China fell by 60%.
You know, the Chinese market used to account for 25% of their overseas sales. Now many wineries want to switch to the Australian and Japanese markets, but they have long been occupied by other brands and cannot fill the gap at all.
The EU wine anti-dumping investigation launched in September even targeted the pillar industries of Italy and Spain.
At present, 12 European wine companies have initially made price promises, fearing to lose the big market in China.
The previous case in which two banks in Lithuania were retaliated due to their participation in restrictions on China, and their net profit plummeted by 62% that month has actually sounded the alarm for the EU.
Moreover, the EU's sanctions have even bypassed WTO rules.
The EU is still using the "alternative country" logic to calculate the extent of dumping, which has previously been ruled illegal by the WTO, and now picked up, clearly setting barriers.
The requirements for the registration of peanut protein are also far-reaching, the technical standards far exceed the international general level, and the essence is to use "green barriers" to block Chinese products from the door.
But the EU has forgotten a set of data:
In the first quarter of 2025, the trade volume between China and Europe will still be 1.3 trillion yuan, and there will be more than 10 million yuan of commodity exchanges every minute; 72% of the EU's luggage and 51.7% of passenger cars also rely on exports to China.
This contradiction of “market on the one hand and restriction on the other” will only slowly consume trade confidence between the two sides.
In the end, the EU's "sanctions celebration" is more like a "sham cloth" for itself, which both wants to mask the reality of the decline in industrial competitiveness, but also wants to speculate on profit between China and the United States.
But the reality is that Chinese enterprises are not passively beaten a decade ago, either setting up emerging markets or upgrading technology to break barriers.
Moreover, China's countermeasures have also hit the EU's "sore spot", forcing it to weigh the price.
The end of this game is clear: cooperation is win-win, and if it is determined to “break the pot, it will ultimately only leave Europe to bear its own losses.