Trojan Horse or Scapegoat: How China’s Economic Posture elevates the European Commission?

The rise of China has long been a focal point in analyzing the evolution of the European Union’s (EU) economic statecraft, encompassing areas such as trade strategy, competition law, and industrial policy. Surprisingly, limited attention has been directed towards understanding China’s role in the political transformation of the EU, especially its impact on the power balance between EU institutions and member states. In this regard, this paper contends that China’s economic posture (no matter coercive, competitive, or cooperative) generates a window of opportunity for the rise of the European Commission in the EU. Specifically, depending on the constellation of two factors—the interest coherence of core member states and the location of the policy competence—the Commission might acquire different roles in dealing with China, ranging from “the Commission as a shield”, “the Commission as a mask”, and “the Commission as an entrepreneur”. Notably, the roles of “the Commission as a mask” and “the Commission as an entrepreneur” pave the way for the supranational actor’s institutional status to ascend de jure and de facto, respectively. To empirically illustrate these roles and ascending pathways, the paper zooms in on the prominent cases of the EU’s response to China’s economic posture, such as the “EU Toolbox for 5G Security”, “Anti-Coercion Instrument”, “Foreign Direct Investment Screening Regulation”, and “De-risking economic strategy”. To trace the unfolding of individual cases and the Commission’s roles in them, the paper brings together different types of evidence from legislative preparatory documents, official speeches and documents, interviews with policy-makers, and authoritative media coverage. Through diverse illustrative case studies, this paper demonstrates that the supranational actor strategically leverages external factors to advance its institutional interests or is inadvertently elected to coordinate a response to external threats. Therefore, external factors, like the economic rise of China, have the potential to significantly shape the dynamics of EU politics. These findings also contribute to broad discussions of how structural changes in international systems, such as the US-China rivalry, shape the EU’s sectoral policies, including industrial policy and competition law reform, and overall integration.