For Europe, China looms as 2025 economic threat, analysts say amid overcapacity concerns

China represents a major economic challenge for Europe this year as the country has the European Union market in its sights amid industrial-overcapacity issues at home and an economic-growth slowdown, panellists said at a German think tank event on Wednesday.

Trouble spots in the world’s second-largest economy were expected to pressure Chinese manufacturers into shipping excess factory goods to Europe at low prices, per the views voiced at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics) 6th China Forecast conference.

Meanwhile, panellists at the live-streamed event said they expected the US to remain a European ally, despite all the unknowns surrounding president-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

Conference speaker Julia Friedlander, CEO of Atlantik-Brucke, an advocacy group for German-American relations, said China poses a “longer competitiveness challenge and a sort of strategic challenge” because of what she called a stated intent to outperform Europe.

“From the competitiveness side, the explicit attempt [is] to out-compete Europe in key industries,” Friedlander said. China is particularly “consistent” with policies on electric vehicles and hi-tech goods, she said.

China is staring down the barrel of overcapacity this year, meaning some Chinese exports may be “redirected” to the EU, where they would not all be absorbed, cautioned Elena Suarez Sanchez, senior international relations adviser for lobby group BusinessEurope.