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President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has revived a familiar anxiety across Europe and Taiwan: How reliable is the United States when its partners’ core interests are at stake? Trump’s governing style is marked by transactional diplomacy, hostility toward multilateral institutions, tariff-driven economic statecraft, and a willingness to publicly berate allies. Taken individually, none of these features is unprecedented. Together, they create a narrative environment that China is learning how to exploit.

Beijing’s opportunity does not lie simply in Trump’s abrasive style or his penchant for provoking allies. It lies in the uncertainty this behavior generates about American intentions, priorities, and staying power. Across allied capitals, Trump’s conduct has reopened questions that many had hoped were settled: whether U.S. commitments are conditional, whether alliances are valued intrinsically or instrumentally, and whether Washington still views long-term strategic competition with China as a shared project rather than a negotiable choice. Recent U.S. actions — including Trump’s intervention in Venezuela and his renewed interest in Greenland — have only sharpened allied concerns about American volatility and strategic unpredictability.

China has moved to take advantage of this moment not primarily through dramatic policy concessions or overt diplomatic pressure, but through narrative weaponization. By using Trump’s own words, policies, and governing style as evidence in plain sight, Beijing reinforces allied doubts about Washington while presenting itself — by contrast — as predictable, pragmatic, and open for business. This strategy does not require China to invent new stories. It works precisely because many of the narratives that benefit Beijing originate within U.S. and Western debates themselves. The RAND Corporation’s decision to withdraw a recent report that advocated for “Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry” and ongoing speculation about European or Canadian overtures toward China amid Trump-related uncertainty are cases in point. Trump’s willingness to link tariff relief to political alignment — including pressuring partners to harden their stance toward China in exchange for economic concessions — has further reinforced perceptions of conditionality and transactionalism in U.S. alliance commitments.

Beijing does not merely stand by to benefit passively from this permissive narrative environment. Chinese diplomats, state-endorsed think tanks, and official media outlets have actively curated and repackaged Trump-era signals to resonate with specific foreign audiences. Rather than inventing new claims, they selectively amplify Trump’s own statements on trade, alliances, and dealmaking — as well as Western debates questioning the durability of U.S. commitments — to suggest that alignment with Washington carries growing economic and political costs. This vindicates what Beijing has been saying all along: Partnership with China is the only correct strategic choice. This approach allows China to operationalize narratives that originate elsewhere to claim solidarity with all countries — including U.S. allies — subjected to coercive U.S. policies while maintaining plausible deniability about direct interference.

One particularly potent strand of this environment is the perception that Trump is profit-driven and deal-prone, and that U.S.-China competition may therefore be negotiable rather than structural. But this “deal narrative” does not stand alone. It interacts with broader perceptions of volatility, punitive treatment of allies, values erosion, and selective U.S. disengagement — especially in Europe’s case, where concerns about Ukraine and Russia loom large. The cumulative effect is not alliance collapse, but drift, hesitation, and internal division — exactly the strategic space China seeks to expand.

Narrative Weaponization as Wedge Strategy

China’s goal is not to flip Europe or Taiwan into pro-China alignment. Its nearer-term objective is subtler: to weaken the alignment between its rivals’ allies and Washington by decoupling China policy from alliance commitments. In practice, this means reconciling the idea that partners can cooperate with the United States on selected security issues — defense spending, intelligence sharing, or Ukraine — with keeping China insulated from securitization and preserving it as a privileged economic and political partner.

Narrative weaponization is central to this effort. Rather than relying on overt propaganda, Beijing embeds itself in existing debates and anxieties: amplifying some themes, curating others, and often allowing favorable narratives to circulate without visibly authoring them. This restraint enhances credibility. Messages that appear to come from allied media, think tanks, or political debates are harder to dismiss as Chinese propaganda or influence operations.

Across Europe and Taiwan, three mutually reinforcing perceptions recur. First, Trump appears volatile and punitive toward allies, treating partnerships as transactional arrangements subject to renegotiation. Second, Trump is widely portrayed as prioritizing economic gain and short-term deals over strategic consistency. Third, if Washington itself seems willing to recalibrate or compartmentalize competition with China, then allies are encouraged to question whether it is wise to “over-securitize” their own relationship with Beijing.

China does not need to push these arguments aggressively. Their plausibility derives from observable U.S. behavior and from Western debates that are often critical of Trump’s approach. Beijing’s role is frequently limited to echoing allied frustrations, drawing out implications in private or semiofficial settings, and positioning itself as the beneficiary of restraint rather than the author of discord.

The Deal Narrative as an Amplifier, not a Foundation

Within this broader narrative ecosystem, the idea that Trump may seek a profit-driven understanding with China has gained particular traction. Commentators in the United States, Europe, and Taiwan have speculated that Trump could prefer a looser accommodation with Beijing — one that delivers economic gains and avoids military confrontation — over sustained strategic competition. Such arguments are typically framed as critiques of Trump rather than endorsements of Chinese policy.

China did not create this narrative, nor does it actually necessarily believe it. Chinese officials and analysts have in fact expressed skepticism about Trump’s reliability as a negotiating partner. Moreover, Beijing has not signaled a willingness to make the kinds of concessions that a genuine grand bargain would require. Yet the narrative creates a wedge opportunity. By highlighting Trump’s unconventional diplomacy, China allows doubts about U.S. intentions to persist.

This effect is reinforced when selective strands of U.S. strategic discourse — calls for stabilization, restraint, and direct U.S.-China channels of communication to better manage crises and avoid accidents — are reframed as evidence that competition itself may be waning. In Washington, such arguments usually aim to better manage rivalry and avoid unnecessary escalation. In Beijing’s retelling, they suggest that the United States may be prepared to compartmentalize or soften competition, strengthening allied incentives to hedge.

The result is not that allies suddenly believe a U.S.–China bargain is imminent, but that uncertainty becomes normalized. And uncertainty, rather than persuasion, is China’s most effective wedge.

Europe: Seduction, Strategic Uncertainty, and Economic Security

In Europe, China’s wedge strategy is primarily seduction-oriented and elite-facing. Beijing presents itself as a stable, pragmatic partner at a time when Trump’s United States appears hostile to the European Union, skeptical of multilateralism, and willing to use economic coercion against friends as well as rivals.

Chinese messaging resonates with ongoing European debates about strategic autonomy, competitiveness, and the future of globalization. It emphasizes economic opportunity, warns against self-inflicted damage through confrontation, and tacitly reinforces the idea that Europe should avoid binding itself too tightly to a U.S.-China policy that may itself be unstable or transactional.

At first glance, this narrative may appear overstated. Unlike during Trump’s first term, there has been no renewed threat to withdraw the United States from NATO, and pressure on European allies has focused more narrowly on burden sharing than on alliance exit. But China’s wedge strategy does not hinge on formal alliance rupture. It feeds instead on uncertainty about how U.S. commitments translate across issues — particularly when alliance solidarity on NATO coexists with transactionalism on trade, ambiguity on Ukraine, and a willingness to challenge allied sovereignty, as seen over Greenland. From Beijing’s perspective, this kind of compartmentalized reassurance still generates exploitable doubt about the reliability and scope of U.S. leadership.

An important effect of this is the revival of intra-Western competition over economic and trade ties to China. If European firms and policymakers fear that Washington may recalibrate its China policy or secure favorable economic arrangements, pressure mounts to act first: soften de-risking measures, pursue selective deals, and resist a security-centered framing of E.U.–China relations. This dynamic has precedent. During Trump’s first term, the prospect of a U.S.–China trade deal helped mobilize support for the E.U.–China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, fueled by the logic that “if Washington can deal, so should Europe.”

Today, that reflex is resurfacing even as European awareness of China-related risks has deepened. Europe’s economic security agenda depends on a shared political understanding that parts of the economic relationship with China must be assessed through a security lens. Narratives that cast U.S. commitment as uncertain or conditional make this framing harder to sustain, empowering constituencies that argue for a return to “business as usual.” These moves are not isolated or symbolic. They are designed to reinforce intra-European disagreement over whether or how China should be treated primarily as a strategic risk or as an indispensable economic partner, complicating efforts to sustain a shared security-centered approach to E.U.–China relations.

Europe’s vulnerability is compounded by lingering instincts that cooperation can overcome competition and that rules and institutions can manage rivalry. Trump’s attacks on the European Union and on multilateralism paradoxically deepen this vulnerability, making Beijing’s self-presentation as a defender of openness and stability resonate more strongly — even when China’s own practices remain coercive. In Europe, this has taken the form of sustained elite-level signaling rather than mass propaganda. Senior Chinese diplomats and official interlocutors have repeatedly expressed sympathy for European frustrations with Washington, contrasting U.S. tariffs, conditionality, and political pressure with China’s purported steadiness as an economic partner. In parallel, Beijing has significantly ratcheted up its coercive economic tools — seen in the two rounds of rare earth export controls, announced in April 2025 and October 2025 — while simultaneously using selective gestures — such as the suspension of the second round of rare earth export controls until November 2026, the calibrated suspension of sanctions on European lawmakers, and renewed diplomatic outreach to key member states — to reinforce the message that improved political ties with China would deliver tangible benefits. In this context, Trump’s rhetoric on Greenland has been read in Europe not as an isolated provocation, but as further evidence of a willingness to treat allied sovereignty instrumentally.

Concerns about Ukraine and Russia further intensify this dynamic. Perceptions that Trump may be willing to compromise European security interests to stabilize relations with Moscow reinforce doubts about whether the United States will consistently “have Europe’s back.” For Beijing, this broader trust deficit is valuable wedge ammunition: If Washington is seen as transactional not only on trade with China but also on Europe’s most pressing security crisis, the case for strategic restraint toward China weakens further.

Taiwan: Coercive Narratives and Abandonment Fears

In Taiwan, China’s wedge strategy is more coercive and society-facing. The target is public confidence that the United States will defend Taiwan and that the Democratic Progressive Party’s alignment strategy is sustainable. Even when U.S. deterrence messaging is strong on paper, Taiwanese public debate is shaped by anxiety gaps between official reassurance and perceived U.S. volatility and transactionalism.

In Taiwan, Chinese activity has been more direct and coercive, as seen from the launch in December 2025 of its most extensive war games around Taiwan (Justice Mission 2025) to date. China has also reinvigorated its concerted campaign to pressure foreign governments to accept Beijing’s claim that China’s sovereignty over Taiwan is ironclad — reasserting its interpretation of history, international law, and the historic bilateral agreements in place between China and other countries (including the United States and its allies) in different diplomatic contexts. Party-state media, official Taiwan-facing institutions, and affiliated commentators have actively amplified Trump’s most transactional statements, pairing them with selective references to U.S. strategic debates or policies, to suggest that the U.S. approach toward Taiwan is fundamentally mercantilist. According to Taiwanese officials and experts, messages suggesting that the United States would subordinate Taiwan’s interests in broader U.S.–China accommodation is routinely reinforced in private exchanges, where Chinese interlocutors explicitly frame U.S. unreliability as a reason to question the sustainability of close alignment with Washington.

Here, evidence of more direct Chinese amplification is stronger. Taiwanese officials and experts report Chinese interlocutors explicitly invoking Trump’s dealmaking instincts and suggesting that Taiwan could become negotiable in a broader U.S.–China accommodation. These messages are paired with domestic political warfare aimed at portraying the governing Democratic Progressive Party as reckless, self-interested, and willing to sacrifice economic well-being for ideological alignment with an unreliable United States.

To be sure, Taiwan’s strategic community is more alert to Chinese narrative manipulation than Europe’s. However, vulnerabilities persist in polarized media ecosystems where abandonment stories spread easily. These narratives are then folded into broader political-warfare efforts aimed at portraying Taiwan’s leadership as reckless and economically irresponsible — willing to jeopardize prosperity in exchange for political alignment with an exploitative external patron. These claims add fuel to the heated debates in Taiwan surrounding the special defense budget introduced by the government, which was blocked by the Taiwan legislature for the sixth time in early January. The objective is not capitulation, but to cause political fatigue and division in Taiwan — eroding domestic consensus and weakening deterrence by undermining confidence in external support.

Drift, Not Rupture

China’s strategy does not aim at dramatic alliance rupture. More attainable — and more valuable —outcomes include hesitation, fragmentation, and drift. In Europe, this means softer and more uneven de-risking, renewed temptations to cut selective deals, and deeper intra-European divisions. In Taiwan, it means intensified political contestation and greater susceptibility to abandonment narratives. In both cases, Trump’s behavior functions as an accelerant. By undermining confidence in U.S. reliability, it expands the space in which China can resist securitization and weaken allied alignment — often without taking visible action.

Reclaiming Agency

Europe and Taiwan should resist the temptation to react defensively to every narrative twist. Over-securitizing the narrative itself risks amplifying anxiety and validating Beijing’s wedge strategy.

For Europe, the more effective response is to reassert agency. This means grounding China policy in a clear-eyed assessment of China’s track record, including its coercive practices and structural economic challenges. While China’s dominance on rare earths gives it unique leverage over Europe, its sluggish growth and need for external markets suggest that Europe can have leverage over China. Europe should define the master frame of E.U.–China relations proactively and commit to an approach that can manage China-related opportunities and concerns in a sustainable way, rather than internalizing narratives shaped by Western anxiety or Chinese opportunism. At the same time, Europe must coordinate internally to avoid a race to Beijing that would weaken collective leverage and undermine economic security. Strategic autonomy requires first and foremost coherence at home.

For Taiwan, narrowing the anxiety gap remains essential. Transparent communication about the U.S. relationship, combined with a positive national narrative that transcends perpetual crisis, can reduce the potency of abandonment stories and strengthen resilience.

All in all, China does not need to manufacture narratives about Trump to benefit from them. By exploiting the uncertainty generated by America’s treatment of its allies — sometimes amplifying, sometimes merely observing — Beijing can weaken alignment with Washington at minimal cost. The challenge for Europe and Taiwan is not to eliminate uncertainty, but to ensure it does not dictate strategy.

Olivia Cheung is a China fellow at the Centre for Security Diplomacy and Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a lecturer at King’s College London.

Luis Simón is the director of the Centre for Security Diplomacy and Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the director of the Brussels office of the Elcano Royal Institute.

Giulia Tercovich is the deputy director of the Centre for Security Diplomacy and Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Image: The White House via Wikimedia Commons