Climate was a safe space for the EU and China. Not anymore.

In one section of the climate statement, Beijing and Brussels agreed to speed up the deployment of renewable energy and “facilitating access to quality green technologies and products, so that they can be available, affordable and beneficial for all countries, including the developing countries.”

That could be read two ways, said Tsang: That both wanted to do more to help the transition to clean energy in poorer countries, or “China’s view” that the EU should be willing to open up more to its products, which would make climate efforts significantly cheaper. 

“There’s a lot of Beijing’s fingerprints on the statement,” said Tsang. Also, he noted, China was named before the EU throughout. Then there were Chinese Communist Party-style poetic flourishes, such as the line: “Green is the defining color of China-EU cooperation.”

Chimits at Institut Montaigne agreed: “It doesn’t cost much for the Europeans to accept this — those are only words.”

“Besides, our current and future production in green industries will only marginally be aimed at developing economies, because they will be high-value-added products,” said Chimits. China, he added, also produces those but mostly focuses on lower-value products, while 85 percent of its car exports go to developing countries.

China’s global expansion in EVs means European automakers are now fighting to stay relevant in nearly every market, including their home turf. While the duties slapped on made-in-China EVs curtailed some exports of the models to the EU, a loophole allowing hybrids to enter levy-free has caused Chinese automakers to shift toward those models instead.