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In 2019, Luis Simón wrote “What Is Europe’s Place in Sino-American Competition?” where he examined the feasibility of Europe’s geopolitical equidistance between the United States and China amidst constant competition. Given the intensifying rivalry between China and the United States, we invited Luis back to expand on his initial thoughts.Read more below.Image: Wikimedia Commons/Diliff In your 2019 article “What Is Europe’s Place in Sino-American Competition?” you discussed Europe’s difficulty in responding to competition between the United States and China. How has Europe’s stance on competition between China and the United States evolved in the past five years? I would highlight three things. First, Europeans have become increasingly aware of the importance, and indeed centrality, of U.S.-Chinese competition in international politics. In 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron said that Europe should “escape a world dominated by Sino-American competition.” In 2022, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that U.S.-Chinese competition had become “the dominant organizing principle for global politics.” Such statements have become commonplace in recent years. Even Europe’s so-called economic security or geo-economic turn has been broadly associated with both the need to de-risk from China and the challenges associated with U.S. economic protectionism, as embodied by former President Donald Trump’s America First and President Joseph Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Second, China’s image in Europe has been on a serious downward trajectory since early 2021 when Beijing sanctioned several European individuals and entities in retaliation for E.U. sanctions related to China’s persecution and mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Europe’s mistrust of China was further compounded by Beijing’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and, most notably, its indirect support of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. Third, trans-Atlantic cooperation has improved significantly in recent years (that is, since Biden’s arrival in power), both in general and in relation to China. How has Russia’s