Win-win cooperation

The EU should prioritize mutually beneficial innovative ties with China instead of portraying the country’s rise as a shock

Speaking at the Summer Davos forum in Dalian in June, Chinese Premier Li Qiang introduced the concept of “China Opportunity 2.0”. More than a slogan, it represents an attempt to help the world understand China’s economic transformation — from the world’s factory to a global platform for innovation.

The 2026 Summer Davos took place at a significant moment when the global economy continues to see moderate growth, geopolitical fragmentation, trade uncertainty and intensifying technological competition. Against this backdrop, the forum’s theme, “Innovating at Scale”, captured one of the defining challenges of the time: Innovation alone is no longer enough; the real challenge is the ability to rapidly deploy innovation throughout the productive system and society as a whole.

If the first phase of China’s opportunity was built primarily on the extraordinary expansion of its domestic market, its openness to foreign investment and its integration into global value chains, “China Opportunity 2.0” is increasingly driven by the country’s capacity to generate innovation, develop cutting-edge technologies and rapidly transform them into large-scale industrial applications.

A growing body of international evidence suggests that China’s innovation system has reached a new level of maturity. In recent years, China has become the world’s largest holder of patent applications, one of the leading investors in research and development, the largest market for electric vehicles, and a global leader in batteries, renewable energy, industrial robotics, digital infrastructure and applied artificial intelligence. Universities, enterprises, research institutes and local governments increasingly operate within an integrated innovation ecosystem that accelerates the transfer of technology from laboratories to industrial production.

What distinguishes China’s model today is not only its ability to invent new technologies, but above all the speed at which these technologies are deployed at scale. The rapid integration of AI into manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, public services and consumer markets provides perhaps the clearest example of this systemic capability. It is also the rationale behind recent government initiatives such as the “AI+” initiative to create new forms of smart economy and improve AI governance.

In other words, innovation in China is quickly translated into the real economy. This close integration of scientific research, industrial policy and manufacturing capability has become one of the defining characteristics of the country’s current stage of development.

The notion of “China Opportunity 2.0” therefore reflects a qualitative transformation. The opportunities offered by China partly lie in participating in one of the world’s most dynamic innovation ecosystems.

This evolution also carries important implications for Europe. In recent years, European Union-China economic relations have largely been influenced by the West, through the lens of “de-risking”. Strengthening the resilience of strategic supply chains is certainly an important objective. Yet the risk — as current developments suggest — is that the political debate is becoming almost entirely focused on competition while overlooking the opportunities created by selective and mutually beneficial technological cooperation.

The EU and China remain two of the world’s largest economies and share common interests across a wide range of areas, including energy transition, climate change, population aging, food security, public health, industrial digitization and the development of AI for good.

Some of the major challenges of the 21st century require economies of scale, substantial investment and continuous innovation. No country, regardless of its level of development, possesses all the resources needed to address these challenges alone.

From this perspective, “China Opportunity 2.0” can also be understood as an opportunity for scientific and industrial cooperation. Europe continues to possess significant competitive strengths in basic research, precision manufacturing, chemistry, biotechnology and high-end industrial production. China, meanwhile, offers growing R&D innovation applications, advanced engineering and industrial capabilities, an exceptionally broad manufacturing base, substantial investment capacity and a domestic market capable of rapidly commercializing innovation.

These characteristics are potentially complementary rather than inherently antagonistic. Naturally, important differences remain. Issues concerning market access, intellectual property protection, regulatory transparency and competitive conditions continue to shape bilateral relations. Ignoring these concerns would be unrealistic. Nevertheless, addressing such differences through dialogue and negotiated solutions is generally more productive than progressively reducing opportunities for cooperation.

Experience consistently shows that innovation flourishes in environments characterized by openness, knowledge exchange, talent mobility and international investment. By contrast, growing technological fragmentation risks slowing global scientific progress, increasing development costs, and reducing humanity’s capacity to tackle shared challenges.

From this perspective, the message emerging from the Summer Davos forum extends well beyond China itself. The central question is how to reform the international system and further various kinds of cooperation between the Global North and the Global South, as well as among Global South countries, to ensure that the benefits of innovation are broadly shared.

China regards scientific and technological innovation as one of the principal drivers of national modernization, higher productivity, high-quality growth and long-term international competitiveness. Within this framework, innovation, industrial development and strategic planning are viewed as deeply interconnected. Whether or not one agrees with this model — which continues to evolve — it is difficult to deny that it has generated significant achievements across a number of technological and manufacturing sectors. For this reason, understanding China’s economic transformation has become an analytical necessity before it is a political one.

Europe now faces an important choice. It would be better to say that Europe should not continue to view China’s transformation primarily through the prism of geopolitical competition. It can adopt a more nuanced approach — one capable of distinguishing between areas where competition is necessary and where cooperation continues to generate mutual benefits.

“China Opportunity 2.0” does not imply the absence of competition, nor does it eliminate differences in national interests. Rather, it suggests that in today’s knowledge economy, innovation and interdependence will remain inseparable dimensions of global economic development. For Europe, recognizing this reality with pragmatism may well become one of the defining tasks of the years ahead.

The author is an associate professor of international studies at the Eurispes BRICS Laboratory, Italy, and a visiting scholar at the Research Center on Building a Community with a Shared Future for Humanity at China Foreign Affairs University.

The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.