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A woman talks through an iPhone at the Berlaymont building, headquarters of the European Commission, in Brussels, Belgium, on March 4, 2024. (Xinhua/Meng Dingbo)

Policies that lean toward unilateral restriction risk eroding the very foundations that have supported decades of growth and cooperation.

by Xinhua writers Zhang Zhaoqing and Ding Yinghua

BRUSSELS, May 2 (Xinhua) -- With global trade under growing strain, the direction taken by major economies to address the challenges will shape whether cooperation holds or fragmentation deepens.

Against this backdrop, the European Union's proposed Industrial Accelerator Act and revised Cybersecurity Act point to a broader policy shift, one that leans toward protectionism under the guise of security and resilience. The consequences, however, could undermine fair competition and weaken global cooperation.

At issue is not the right to regulate. Safeguarding cybersecurity, strengthening industrial resilience and ensuring supply-chain security are legitimate policy goals. The concern lies in how these goals are pursued.

When regulatory tools rely on vague or non-technical criteria, or single out companies by origin rather than conduct, the line between risk management and market distortion blurs.

This matters because China and the EU are not ordinary trading partners. They are two major pillars of the global economy, deeply interconnected through trade, investment and industrial cooperation.

In 2025, bilateral trade had reached 828.1 billion U.S. dollars, while the first quarter of 2026 recorded growth of 17.6 percent. Such interdependence has long served as a stabilizing force in an increasingly uncertain global environment.

An aerial drone photo taken on Feb. 26, 2026 shows the China-Europe freight trains waiting for outbound departure at Manzhouli Railway Station in Manzhouli City, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. (Photo by Huang Xu/Xinhua)

The revised Cybersecurity Act illustrates the challenge. References to concepts such as "non-technical risks" or "high-risk suppliers," if left insufficiently defined, could open the door to assessments that are less about measurable security standards and more about political categorization. Once that shift occurs, cybersecurity risks will be transformed from a technical discipline into an instrument of economic exclusion.

The economic fallout would be severe. Europe's information and communications technology supply chain is deeply integrated and highly specialized. Forcing operators to replace efficient suppliers for political reasons would raise costs, slow network development and weaken innovation capacity.

Even the European Commission's own impact assessment points to the scale of the burden. It estimates the value of so-called "high-risk" equipment in Europe's mobile networks between 2019 and 2027 at around 18.5 billion euros (21.7 billion dollars), with operators still facing an additional 3.4 billion to 4.3 billion euros (4-5.04 billion dollars) per year in replacement costs during the transition. Such costs would fall not only on telecom companies, but ultimately on European consumers, businesses and digital competitiveness.

Therefore, a policy presented as strengthening resilience may end up reducing it.

The Industrial Accelerator Act presents a similar dilemma. It is framed as a tool to revive European manufacturing, but several of its provisions -- including local-content requirements and restrictions affecting investment from globally competitive producers -- risk excluding Chinese companies in sectors such as batteries, electric vehicles and photovoltaics.

Photo taken on May 23, 2025 shows European Union flags at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. (Xinhua/Zhao Dingzhe)

Such concerns are not confined to China. In remarks reported by Politico, British Trade Secretary Peter Kyle warned that Brussels' "Made in Europe" approach risks turning the continent into a "closed shop," arguing that protectionism would hold back, rather than strengthen, Europe's economic potential.

Europe's green transition depends on affordable technologies, efficient supply chains and large-scale industrial cooperation. Chinese enterprises are not obstacles to that transition. In many areas, they are part of the solution. Restricting their participation would increase costs for European industries and slow the very decarbonization agenda the EU says it wants to accelerate.

At stake is also the EU's long-standing commitment to a rules-based international trading system. Principles such as non-discrimination, transparency and proportionality have been central to that framework. Regulatory approaches that appear to depart from these norms invite questions about consistency and credibility.

None of this argues against regulation. It underscores the need for regulation that is evidence-based, transparent and applied without discrimination. In an interconnected global economy, resilience is strengthened not by isolating supply chains, but by making them more diversified, efficient and cooperative.

The choice facing major economies is not between security and openness, but between approaches that reinforce mutual trust and those that accelerate fragmentation. Policies that lean toward unilateral restriction risk eroding the very foundations that have supported decades of growth and cooperation.

China-EU economic relations have developed over decades through sustained engagement and shared interest. Preserving that foundation will depend on a continued commitment to dialogue, fair competition and commonly accepted rules.