EU losing China tech-race, as Beijing prepares to host German CEOs

She introduced a brand new probe into suspected Chinese language state assist to get wind-turbine contracts in Bulgaria, France, Greece, Romania, and Spain.

However she stated wind generators have been simply a part of a wider Chinese language “playbook” to drive EU companies out of “important” industrial sectors.

“The result’s that these days, fewer than three p.c of the photo voltaic panels put in within the EU are produced in Europe. We see this playbook now deployed throughout all clean-tech areas, legacy semiconductors, and past,” she stated.

“It isn’t solely harmful for our competitiveness. It additionally jeopardises our financial safety. Now we have seen how one-sided dependencies can be utilized towards us,” she added.

China was “a associate, an financial competitor, and a systemic rival, and the final two dimensions are more and more converging,” Vestager stated.

Her speech made repeated reference to the Oscar-winning movie Oppenheimer concerning the discovery of the nuclear bomb.

And she or he framed the worldwide race for domination in clear tech, AI, and web rule in the identical phrases because the Chilly Struggle-era nuclear arms race and its creation of a brand new world order.

“Now fast-forward 80 years [from Oppenheimer] … digital applied sciences change the world as we all know it,” she stated.

“One factor is obvious: in a world powered by expertise, those that lead are those that management essentially the most important applied sciences, and their provide chains. Chips, batteries, electrical automobiles,” she added.

Turning to AI and social media, she additionally painted “grasping” US tech giants, in addition to international adversaries, as a possible menace to Western order.

“We noticed content material pushed to tens of millions by subtle algorithms — not as a result of it’s true or related, however as a result of it’s emotionally viral. Consider all of the dangers that this entails for our democracy,” Vestager stated.

“We can’t settle for to be confronted with insane quantities of unlawful posts when scrolling on social media,” she stated, defending current EU crackdowns on poisonous content material.

“We can’t settle for that platforms’ algorithms are utilized by international adversaries to jeopardise our democracy, by disinformation campaigns. By no means. However particularly not within the midst of an election,” she additionally stated.

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The US is holding presidential elections in November and the EU is holding European Parliament elections in June, amid Russia’s monitor file of interference in each transatlantic votes.

And Vestager spoke the identical day Russian and Chinese language international ministers met in Beijing of their strongest present of friendship since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — as if to corroborate the EU commissioner’s darkish rhetoric on rising threats.

However Vestager’s emphasis on Chinese language tech-dominance additionally got here amid concern that Germany was driving a coach and horses by EU efforts to “de-risk” from China, for the sake of German business.

China already accounts for 70 to 80 p.c of world manufacturing capability for important elements for electrical automobile batteries, photo voltaic panels, and wind generators.

China additionally accounted for 91 p.c of world funding in clean-tech manufacturing final yr to additional lengthen its lead.

However whilst China has pushed out many European and US companies from the Chinese language market after first getting maintain of their tech secrets and techniques, its particular relationship with Germany has blossomed.

“The timing of Vestager’s speech is vital … German chancellor Olaf Scholz is about to go away for Beijing with a delegation of German CEOs,” stated Agathe Demarais, from the European Council on International Relations, a think-tank.

The CEOs of main German automobile, chemical compounds, and engineering companies Bayer, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Merck, Siemens, and Thyssenkrupp will accompany Scholz on a four-day journey to China beginning 16 April.

“There is no such thing as a European consensus concerning the dangers that China’s industrial overcapacity pose,” stated Demarais.

“This highlights diverging levels of financial reliance on China, with Germany an outlier in Europe. German companies have an enormous presence in China, the place their annual revenues symbolize a staggering 6 p.c of German GDP (about double the common of Europe’s six largest economies),” she added.