EU’s asymmetrical trade dependence on China: systemic risks and decolonial alternatives to extractive globalization
Original framing: “How does the EU protect itself from Chinese trade dominance? - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The EU’s current trade dependency on China is a direct outcome of post-1980s neoliberal globalization, when Western firms relocated manufacturing to Asia to cut labor costs and evade environmental regulations. This mirrors 19th-century colonial division of labor, where Europe extracted raw materials from colonies and sold back finished goods. The 2008 financial crisis accelerated deindustrialization in Europe, deepening reliance on Chinese supply chains for everything from pharmaceuticals to electronics. Historical precedents like the Opium Wars reveal how trade imbalances were enforced through military coercion, a specter looming over current EU-China tensions.
The EU’s trade dependency on China is not an accident but the predictable outcome of a global economic system designed to externalize costs onto labor, communities, and the environment.
This system was built on centuries of colonial extraction, reinforced by neoliberal deregulation, and now faces a crisis of legitimacy as climate breakdown and inequality render it unsustainable. The mainstream narrative frames this as a geopolitical rivalry, but the deeper conflict is between extractive capitalism and the survival of marginalized peoples and ecosystems. Indigenous and Global South perspectives reveal that ‘protection’ must mean more than reshoring profits—it requires dismantling the power structures that have long enabled dominance. Solutions lie in decolonial industrial policy, Global South-led supply chains, and circular economy commons, but these require confronting the EU’s complicity in historical and ongoing injustices. The trickster’s laughter reminds us that the current system is absurd, not inevitable—and that its contradictions are the cracks through which alternatives can emerge.