Europe's reliance on Chinese goods has become so deeply embedded in certain industries that credible alternatives have all but vanished. The pressure intensified in 2025, when Washington imposed sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, prompting fears that Beijing would redirect surplus production into European markets at slashed prices. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described it as "a new China shock" at the G7 summit in Canada last year, warning that Beijing was flooding global markets with subsidised overcapacity that its own consumers could not absorb.
Last week, EU Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné also called for EU businesses to diversify their suppliers as trade tensions with China are ramping up. Beijing has made repeated threats towards the EU while Brussels seeks to strengthen legislation to protect its markets from Chinese dependence. According to Eurostat, EU imports from China totalled €559.4 billion in 2025, a figure that has grown 89% since 2015, generating a trade deficit of €359.8 billion. In 2025 alone, EU exports to China fell by 6.5% while imports rose by 6.4%.
China is, by a wide margin, the EU's single largest source of imports and the primary supplier of dependent products—parts and raw materials needed to build final products. It exports 47% of the category to the bloc, roughly half of its total import value representing around €206 billion out of €404 billion. The US is the second-largest supplier of dependent products to the EU, but it accounts for less than 10% of the category and only 11% of total import value, according to the latest analysis from the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) released this month.
Taken together with other data indicating broader strategic dependency, five sectors emerge where the EU's exposure to Beijing is structural: solar energy, critical raw materials, industrial robotics, chemicals, as well as textiles and wood products.
Green transition, made in China
Of all the EU's dependencies on Beijing, the one buried deepest inside its green agenda is arguably the most consequential. According to Eurostat, China accounted for 98% of all solar panel imports into the EU in 2024. The total value of those imports fell from €19.7 billion in 2023 to €10.9 billion in 2024, not because volumes declined but because Chinese prices collapsed. A report published this year by the think tank Loom also indicated that China supplies 88% of EU lithium-ion battery imports for electric vehicles in 2025, up from 75% in 2019.
The vulnerability extends well beyond finished products. The European Parliament's research department found that the EU sources 98% of its rare-earth magnets from China, including materials essential to electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and defence systems. Data from the European Commission also puts EU reliance on Beijing for magnesium at 97%. The mineral is essential for next-generation batteries that are an alternative to lithium-ion technologies, while also being used for hydrogen storage and lightweight renewable infrastructure. Due to this overwhelming single-country dependency, the European Commission has placed it on the bloc's Critical Raw Materials list to accelerate domestic extraction, processing and recycling initiatives. Finally, Chinese firms control over 80% of global solar photovoltaic manufacturing capacity, from polysilicon production to finished modules, according to a Geopolitical Intelligence Services report. In short, Europe's green transition rests on foundations it does not control.
The robot surge
Industrial robotics tells a story not just of dependency but of accelerating displacement. Between early 2025 and early 2026, EU imports of industrial robots from China rose by 315%, with average prices falling 29%, according to data published by the European Commission's import surveillance task force. China's dominance in this sector is not accidental. Its "Made in China 2025" industrial strategy, sustained by state subsidies, cheap credit and tax incentives, helped grow the country's advanced robotics sector to triple the number of companies recorded since 2020. Domestic overproduction has pushed Chinese manufacturers to export aggressively, at prices European competitors cannot match. According to the International Federation of Robotics, China now produces more industrial robots than Germany, South Korea, Japan and the US combined.
Chemicals, textiles and wood: old dependencies, new depths
In the chemicals sector, the European Commission's surveillance data revealed that certain chemical compounds were being imported from China at rates 36 times higher than the previous year, with prices as much as 95% lower. In March 2025, the Commission launched dedicated monitoring of specific ethylene and ammonia-based chemicals, citing production overcapacity in China and a sharp rise in their EU market share. Textiles and wood products tell a similar story. Clothing and footwear from China still represent a substantial portion of the EU's non-domestic supply, even as some production has shifted to lower-cost Southeast Asian competitors such as Vietnam. China supplies approximately 30% to 35% of the European Union's total non-domestic clothing and footwear imports by value, according to Eurostat.
These dependencies are not new, but their depth has grown. The EU's response has been piecemeal: the Critical Raw Materials Act, the Net-Zero Industry Act, and calls for diversification. Yet as the data shows, the gap between ambition and reality remains wide. For a deeper look at the political tensions underlying these trade flows, see French Trade Minister Warns China Against Destroying Europe's Industry. Meanwhile, the EU is exploring alternative trade routes, as highlighted in EU and Mexico Sign Updated Trade Deal to Diversify Away from US and China. The challenge for Brussels is not just to identify vulnerabilities, but to build the industrial capacity to reduce them—a task that will require sustained political will and investment.
