Yi Fan

Mr. Lin’s restaurant is a modest Chinese-style eating house, sitting elegantly near St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest. The rebounding post-pandemic tourism has kept his business humming. “Apart from sightseeing, they also come here for investment,” Mr. Lin said, “Many of CATL’s senior officials have workday meals at my restaurant.”

CATL, or Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, is the biggest lithium-ion battery manufacturer for EVs in the world. It is building a battery plant in Hungary with a total investment of 7.34 billion euros. The planned gigafactory is expected to create 9,000 new jobs for local people and contribute to Hungary’s endeavor of turning itself into a pioneer in delivering the European Green Deal.

Another Chinese carmaker Nio will set up its first overseas plant in Biatorbagy as its manufacturing, service, and R&D center for power products in Europe. China’s CMC built Central Europe’s biggest solar plant in Kaposvár, which represents a 5 percent increase in Hungary’s photovoltaic capacity and a 120,000-ton reduction in its carbon emissions. These projects speak volume about the vibrant cooperation between China and Hungary and the benefit it delivers. As Hungary’s foreign minister said during the recent Summer Davos Forum in Tianjin, “We look at China as a country with which, if you cooperate, you can take a lot of benefit out of it.”

And it does not stop here. Official statistics show that since 2012, China-CEEC trade has grown at 8.1 percent on a yearly average and China’s import from CEECs has grown even faster, at 9.2 percent per year. The China-CEEC Expo & International Consumer Goods Fair, held in China’s eastern port city of Ningbo last month, bustled with business-savvy European exhibitors. They signed contracts with Chinese counterparts over a wide range of products including Hungarian display screens and other EU geographical indications system products.

China’s economic ties with the European Union have also seen great dynamism. Josep Borrell, EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, commented in a recent statement on the substantial economic ties between the EU and China and noted, “Every day, our trade with China is around US$2.7 billion.” Chinese enterprises are making notable contributions to Europe by bringing innovation, scalability and advanced technology.

Lately, talks about de-risking abound, including in Europe. But in fact, forestalling risks is not incompatible with cooperation. Economic globalization has turned the world economy into a gigantic, intricate web of interconnections and dependencies in which countries prosper or perish together. Dependencies should be viewed from a dialectical perspective. Over exaggerating dependency is ill-advised, even more so is simply equating interdependence with insecurity. Indeed, the argument for de-risking pales in face of the fruitful and thriving cooperation China has with Hungary and Europe as noted above.

More importantly, de-risking puts Europe and the wider world in even greater risk, as it threatens to split the world into rival blocs, create Cold-War-style faultlines that may take decades, if not longer, to mend, and push countries back behind national economic barriers for fear of potential world disintegration. The IMF estimated that trade fragmentation could cost up to 7 percent of global GDP in the long term.

China and Europe are partners, not rivals. It is the expressed desire of both sides to consolidate and strengthen their economic ties, to tap into their mutual complementarity and expand and advance cooperation in green energy, digital economy and other areas, and to pursue common prosperity. The China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership, in its 20th anniversary, has provided more certainty and stability to a rapidly transforming world and holds great promise for both sides and beyond.

Just as the Chinese premier pointed out during his visit to Berlin, the lack of cooperation is the biggest risk, and the lack of development is the biggest insecurity. Facing the unparalleled challenges of climate change and global governance as well as the unprecedented opportunities brought by transformative technological advances, growing together is the best way to de-risk.