China Urges France, Germany to Avoid EU Protectionist Tools

The intervention is notable less for its rhetoric than for its target: Beijing is appealing directly to Paris and Berlin rather than to Brussels, treating the EU's two largest economies as the decisive bloc on trade defense. That framing matters because it signals the real battleground is intra-EU consensus, not a single Commission decision. Whether France and Germany's informal paper hardens into formal instruments — and whether other member states align with it — is the open question.