摘要：A view of the container terminal of Tangshan Port in Tangshan, north China's Hebei Province, June 16, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]

A view of the container terminal of Tangshan Port in Tangshan, north China's Hebei Province, June 16, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]

ByMatyas Kohan

After spending six weeks in China in August and September of this year, I am no longer indifferent to mentions of China. I cannot help noticing how frequently this country I grew to know, love and respect crops up in Europe's political debates, including those of my native Hungary.

China is everywhere: It's omnipresent in our discussions about the status and future of the European automotive industry; it's a keystone of the European scramble to end the war in Ukraine; and it looms large whenever any European city or country plans to procure almost anything. I used to glance over it. Now it gets to me every time.

It does so because every single mention of China in our European reality reeks of missed opportunity. Cars, peace, trade deals, even trolleybuses: We could go so much further in technological renewal, competitiveness and digital modernization if our relationship with China was one of trust and partnership, not one of suspicion.

Recently I was listening to a debate in the Committee for Transport, Climate Action and Urban Development in the Budapest City Assembly on trolleybus procurement. Budapest is special because it's a city run by a cohort of mainstream European anti-China hawks in the heart of the EU's most China-friendly country. Against the backdrop of Chinese investment into cutting-edge electromobility and high-speed railways all over the rest of the country, Budapest is the only place where a Hungarian gets to taste the reality of Europe's China policy today. It is a policy of lagging behind, mired in uppity denial. For someone who loves Europe, it is anything but a beautiful sight.

The committee chairman asked for a debate on whether the over-the-air (OTA) firmware update feature of trolleybuses made by the Chinese manufacturer Yutong Bus Co., Ltd., the apparent winner of the tender, constitutes a national security risk as China is "not in the same military bloc with us."

The deputy CEO of the city's public transport company was open to this discussion, citing Norway's experience of simply removing the SIM cards from the buses when they leave the garage to prevent OTA updates during operation. He tried to appease the committee by saying that the worst thing Yutong can possibly do is stop the bus from afar, and delivered an apologetic speech saying that the only reason they even let the Chinese participate in the tender was that the national government asked them to do so.

It is an open secret to anyone working in the European transport sector today that every time a procurement tender is opened to non-EU companies, the Chinese win because they offer superior technology for dazzlingly low prices. This used to be called competitiveness when we were ahead of them. Now that they are taking over the global market for buses and rolling stock, it's framed as a "national security risk," a result of nothing but state subsidies; and cavemen's measures are taken to reconcile the Chinese technological superiority our complacency allowed to happen with the distrust our mindless China-bashing resulted in.

The rest of the world just buys Chinese trolleybuses and goes on with their lives in improved transport efficiency, while we sweep up the shards of our broken China policy.

Visitors view a Dongfeng exhibit car at the Turin Auto Show in Turin, Italy, September 27, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]

It's not too late to change course. There is still time to recognize that a policy built on the quicksand of shrill human rights activism and strategic insecurity is leading us nowhere, especially against the backdrop of Europe's waning competitiveness. It's not too late to realize either that starting to respect China as a powerful partner doesn't turn us into its subjects or weak China shills.

The same Europe that is now relinquishing technology sought after by the rest of the world has sold strategic assets to China while showing it nothing but mistrust and disrespect. How about a paradigm shift towards respect, firmness in the sovereign European ownership of strategic industries, and confident openness to win-win cooperation in sectors in which China is now superior? How about recognizing that estrangement from China throws us further down our competitiveness impasse, while a new partnership with China could be a way out of it?

When China opened up to the world in the 1970s, it faced its backwardness head on. It recognized that ideological arrogance leads to isolation rather than progress, and invited Western capital through special economic zones and joint ventures while protecting its sovereignty and strategic sectors.

In the space of its millennia of history, China has experienced being at the top of the world, being dirt poor and humiliated, and then rising to the top again. China is the living proof for Winston Churchill's old adage: "Success is not final; failure is not fatal."

Europe is not exempt from the golden rules of history. It is now painfully obvious that Europe's centuries of success were not final, but its decade of self-inflicted failure must not be fatal either. We must approach our decay the way China faced its own by trading arrogance for humility, keeping in our own hands what is most important, and inviting the best of the world to help us in areas where we are falling behind. The "best of the world" now includes China, home to a worthy alternative of Western modernity.

Now, as China adopts the Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development, I call on Europe to recognize that we have a pet project to sneak into the plan.

The project is about a competitive and sovereign Europe: one where services level up to the frictionless comfort of the WeChat mini-program ecosystem, where e-commerce meets JD.com's standard, where transport is clean, fast and cheap, and where a handful of well-designed applications bind a huge country of over a billion people into one efficient, comfortable and open single market that unfetters productive powers and entrepreneurial excellence. We have a place in China's plan. It would be foolish not to take it.

Matyas Kohan is a foreign policy writer and deputy head of opinion for the Hungarian news agency Mandiner.

来源：中国网一点号