China

As of 18 October 2026. London, Berlin, Washington and Moscow have all come to Beijing this year, and NATO's summit texts have stopped naming China. In 2024 the allies had called it a “decisive enabler” of Russia's war. Keir Starmer visited in January, Friedrich Merz in February. Donald Trump was welcomed with a 21-gun salute on Tiananmen Square on 14 May, and six days later Vladimir Putin agreed with Xi Jinping to extend their treaty of friendship. In September Xi went to Washington and came back with eight agreed outcomes, by Beijing's count, among them tariff cuts on 30 billion dollars of goods in each direction and a dialogue on artificial intelligence.

Europe's friction runs through trade. In October Brussels and Beijing reached an understanding on hybrid cars, reported as an annual quota of 350,000 made in China, as China's car exports rose 64 per cent in September. The next dates lie close together. Beijing's one-year pause on its widened export controls for rare earths is due to end on 10 November, and Xi hosts the APEC leaders in Shenzhen on 18 and 19 November.

DURCHD8’s NATO study separates two kinds of outside pressure on the alliance. Russia goes after values and purpose, through campaigns that wear down trust. China works on the material base, on know-how and on the standing of institutions, through what Chinese doctrine calls the “three warfares”. The Poland study shows the second on the ground, at places the alliance itself depends on. Beyond Rzeszów and the 4G network, Hutchison runs a container terminal in Gdynia until 2104, and in 2024, by Polish reports the study cites, it turned away an American military vessel. The rail yards at Małaszewicze carry about 90 per cent of the rail freight between China and the EU and much of the Western aid for Ukraine. The study reads both pressures as one chain: Russia breaks trust, China builds dependence, voices at home turn both into a quarrel about sovereignty, and online campaigns spread it. It finds no sign of coordination. The NATO study marks as inference that the two multiply each other.

In Beijing’s account of the May summit Trump called the two countries “the most important and most powerful countries in the world”. In Bishkek on 31 August Putin called Russia’s ties with China “a model for state-to-state relations”. With Washington the talk turned to tariff cuts, with Moscow to energy and industry. In Europe China’s weight lies in what has already been bought and built.

Europe's carmakers feel it at home. Chinese brands took about 12 per cent of new-car sales in Europe in August and one in four hybrids. In Poland the bill is already on paper: 14.4 billion zloty to replace Huawei in the network, the “Lex Huawei” against high-risk vendors, under threat of an investor claim, and, the Poland study notes, a risk for the American troops stationed there. In Ukraine the Chinese parts show up in the drones that strike its cities. For the alliance the question is one of reading. The pressure the studies locate on networks, know-how and institutions runs through trade offices, regulators and intelligence services, each with its own file.

Who in Europe's governments reads a car quota, a scanner contract and a report on cyber-espionage as parts of the same contest?

China’s lever over Europe is supply. In October 2025 it widened its export controls on rare earths, then paused the expansion for a year after a truce with Washington, and Poland’s battery industry runs on Chinese inputs. Europe’s lever is its market: duties on Chinese electric cars and the planned quota on hybrids. Washington and Beijing trade concessions directly, from the tariff arrangement to a memorandum on military crisis communication that Beijing says both militaries will conclude, and Beijing names Taiwan “the most important issue” between them. On the war with Iran they set out a joint line in September: Iran’s commitment against nuclear weapons stands, and no country may levy tolls on international waterways.

With Russia China keeps the partnership the allies called “no limits” in 2024. Xi and Putin met three times this year, once by video, and Putin promised to coordinate with Beijing in the United Nations, BRICS and the G20. European capitals deal with Beijing one by one. Britain affirms a “long-term and consistent” partnership, Beijing calls its ties with Germany “all-around”, and France held its 28th strategic dialogue with China on 10 October. In July China became Poland’s largest source of imports for the first time. That trade left Poland a deficit of more than 31 billion euros in 2024, the Poland study records.

China appears in DURCHD8’s studies as the second actor. Each study finds it at a different place. NATO Consensus as Ceremony grounds its distinction between the two outside pressures in four independent sources, among them NATO’s Vilnius communiqué of 2023, which called China a “systemic challenge”, and German intelligence reports of Chinese cyber-espionage, and it traces Chinese dual-use parts into Russia’s drone production after the Iran confrontation of spring 2026. Poland: Two States, One Republic maps the Chinese side of Poland’s exposure in five sectors, from the 4G network to the port of Gdynia and the rail yards at Małaszewicze, and reads it as one link in a chain with Russia’s pressure. Russia’s Information Domain as a Governed Power Function measures Moscow’s control of information against Beijing’s and finds Russia weaker in infrastructure and in counting costs. Ivashov: Signal Within a Governed Information Environment sets Beijing’s permitted voices, among them Hu Xijin, once editor of the Global Times, beside Moscow’s.

The NATO study marks one step as inference: that the Russian and the Chinese pressure multiply each other. It can be tested where the two meet, in the parts inside Russia’s drones and in the contracts behind Europe’s networks.