How Little Chinese Participation Can Europe Afford?

The meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Washington this week did not resolve the fundamental tensions between the world's two largest economies. Strategic competition remains, but so does practical economic engagement.

Europe faces its own version of that tension. It has spent the past few years strengthening economic security and reducing strategic dependencies, including in clean-energy supply chains.

The rationale is understandable. Europe does not want today's cost advantage to become tomorrow's strategic dependency.

The harder question is what should actually count as dependency.

Europe's own economic-security approach already looks beyond country of origin. Supply concentration, substitutability, diversification and the consequences of disruption all matter. Applied more closely to wind, however, that logic produces a more complicated picture of Chinese participation.

A supply chain can contain more Chinese participation while becoming less vulnerable. It can also contain less Chinese participation while becoming more vulnerable.

That distinction matters.

One supply chain, very different dependencies

At turbine level, Europe remains relatively self-sufficient.

In 2024, EU manufacturers accounted for 88% of new onshore installations and 96% of new offshore installations in the EU. [Source: European Commission Joint Research Centre, 2025]

This sits alongside a very different global picture. China accounts for 77% of global nacelle manufacturing capacity and 78% of blade capacity, compared with 9% and 7% respectively for the EU. [Source: JRC, 2025]

Both can be true. China can dominate global manufacturing while Europe remains capable of supplying most of its own turbines.

The picture is different for offshore foundations.

According to Frost & Sullivan, Dajin accounted for 18.5% of European offshore monopile sales by value in 2024 and 29.1% in the first half of 2025.

Europe can manufacture monopiles without China. Chinese suppliers nevertheless add manufacturing capacity and competition.

Removing that supply would reduce Chinese participation. Whether it would reduce European vulnerability is a different question. If the result were less available capacity, fewer qualified suppliers, longer delivery schedules or higher costs, resilience might not improve at all.

When Chinese capacity becomes European capacity

Installation vessels make the distinction even clearer.

In August, Danish offshore installation company Cadeler ordered two new T-class foundation installation vessels from COSCO Shipping Offshore's shipyard in Qidong, China. The approximately €805 million order follows other Cadeler newbuilds constructed at COSCO. The pattern extends beyond Cadeler: Van Oord's Boreas and DEME's Norse Wind were built at CIMC Raffles in Yantai, while DEME's Orion was built at COSCO Qidong. [Source: Cadeler, 10 August 2026]

These are clearly examples of Chinese industrial participation.

Yet after delivery, the capability is not Chinese. The vessels are owned and operated by European companies and become part of Europe's offshore installation capacity.

That creates an interesting inversion.

Chinese industrial capacity is being used to create European-controlled industrial capacity.

Reducing Chinese participation in this case could mean building the same vessels elsewhere. If comparable capacity, cost and delivery schedules were available, the strategic effect might be limited. If they were not, excluding Chinese shipyards could delay the creation of an asset that Europe itself ultimately controls.

The amount of Chinese content therefore tells us surprisingly little about the resulting dependency.

Where participation and dependency do overlap

Permanent magnets look very different.

According to the European Commission, 98% of total EU rare-earth magnet demand is currently met by Chinese imports. China also dominates important upstream stages of rare-earth processing and magnet manufacturing. [Source: European Commission, Rare Earth Elements, Permanent Magnets and Motors]

Rare-earth permanent magnets are important components in many wind turbine generators, particularly offshore. Here, alternatives at sufficient scale remain limited.

Removing Chinese supply would therefore not simply change the nationality of a supplier. It could remove access to a capability that Europe cannot readily replace.

This is much closer to what strategic dependency actually means.

The contrast across the wind supply chain is striking. European turbine manufacturing remains strong. Chinese foundation suppliers supplement an existing European manufacturing base. Chinese shipyards can create assets that subsequently sit under European ownership and operational control. Rare-earth magnets remain difficult to substitute.

All four involve China.

They do not represent the same dependency.

Participation is easier to measure than vulnerability

This distinction becomes important when de-risking moves from principle into implementation.

Country of origin, ownership and local content are visible and measurable. Vulnerability is harder to quantify. It depends on whether alternatives exist, how quickly they can be mobilized, what replacing a supplier would cost, and who ultimately controls the capability created.

That creates a risk of confusing the proxy with the problem.

Chinese participation can be a useful indicator of where Europe should examine exposure more closely. It is not, by itself, a measure of that exposure.

For wind developers and supply-chain teams, the practical consequence is significant. A procurement decision that reduces Chinese content may satisfy one measure of diversification while doing little to reduce the project's actual vulnerability. In some cases, it could replace a manageable Chinese exposure with higher cost, tighter capacity or another concentrated dependency elsewhere.

What is easy to measure is not necessarily what creates the risk.

Control also runs in the other direction

There is another side to this question.

Europe increasingly wants Chinese companies entering its market to localize: invest in manufacturing, employ locally, develop European supply chains and, in some cases, bring technology and R&D with them.

For Chinese companies, that creates a different calculation. Localization is not only about market access. It is also about how much capital, technology and control to place permanently inside Europe.

Recent cases outside wind illustrate why that question matters.

Nexperia is headquartered in the Netherlands but owned by China's Wingtech. In 2025, the Dutch government invoked an exceptional law over what it described as risks to critical technological knowledge and production capabilities in Europe. Wingtech disputed the intervention, while separate court proceedings resulted in the suspension of Nexperia's CEO and the transfer of almost all voting rights to an independent administrator. [Sources: Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs; Amsterdam Court of Appeal]

British Steel presents a different case. Owned by China's Jingye Group since 2020, it became subject to UK government intervention when Jingye moved to close the blast furnaces at Scunthorpe in 2025. After the two sides failed to agree on a long-term solution, British Steel was brought into public ownership in July 2026. [Source: UK Government]

The circumstances were very different, and neither case should be read simply as European action against Chinese ownership.

They do, however, reveal the other side of the control question.

Europe asks whether strategically important capabilities involving Chinese companies remain sufficiently under European control. Chinese investors must increasingly ask how much control they retain once strategically important capabilities are localized in Europe.

That is the emerging localization bargain.

Less China is not the same as less risk

Europe has good reasons to de-risk its strategic supply chains. The distinction is not between de-risking and doing nothing.

It is between measuring risk through Chinese participation and measuring the vulnerability that participation actually creates.

The two sometimes point in the same direction. Permanent magnets are a clear example.

Sometimes they do not.

A Chinese monopile supplier can increase competition in a market where alternatives exist. A vessel built in China can become European-controlled installation capacity. Removing either may reduce Chinese content without necessarily making Europe's wind supply chain more resilient.

This suggests a more demanding test for both policy and procurement decisions: if Chinese participation is removed, what vulnerability has actually been reduced, and what new vulnerability has been created in its place?

That question is harder to answer than calculating Chinese content.

It may also be the more important one.