ANALYSIS: The Art of the Swarm — How Europe Can Finally Say No to Beijing

Introduction: The End of Acquiescence

A Diagnosis Finally Made, a Strategy Still Missing

On June 17, 2026, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) published a document that would shake Brussels diplomatic circles: "The Art of the Swarm: Systemic Rivalry with China on European Terms", authored by Andrew Small, director of the Asia program at ECFR and the first China fellow at the European Commission. The title alone is a manifesto. The art of the swarm. Not the art of frontal confrontation, not the naivety of perpetual dialogue, but something more subtle, more adapted to Europe's institutional morphology: striking everywhere, simultaneously, in imperceptible touches, until the cumulative effect becomes irresistible.

Since 2019, the European Union has officially labeled China a "systemic rival." It was a historic admission. But seven years later, the diagnosis had preceded the treatment. Responses had accumulated one tariff at a time, one sector after another, one security restriction after another. Meanwhile, Beijing watched, learned, and targeted precisely the pressure points likely to paralyze any coordinated European reaction. Andrew Small identifies this impasse with a frankness rare in geostrategic literature: Europe has shown China exactly where to push to make it retreat.

The Context of the June 2026 European Council

The heads of state and government of the Union met in Brussels on June 18 and 19, 2026, with a heavy agenda. The China question was no longer a peripheral issue. In the first quarter of 2026, China recorded its largest trade surplus ever achieved with the EU: $83 billion. Chinese exports to the bloc reached 148 billion, compared to only 65 billion in the other direction. Europe was now absorbing 31% of China's entire global trade surplus. These figures were no longer just economic. They were geopolitical. They were existential.

Systemic Rivalry: A Concept Seven Years in the Making

From "Partner" to "Competitor" to "Systemic Rival"

In March 2019, when the European Commission and the High Representative for Foreign Policy published their joint strategy designating China simultaneously as a cooperation partner, economic competitor, and systemic rival, the term "systemic rival" was almost drowned in euphemisms. Beijing had to be handled carefully, Berlin had to be handled carefully, Budapest had to be handled carefully. The tripartite formula was a masterpiece of calculated ambiguity. It allowed each capital to read into it what it wished. Paris saw a confirmation of distrust.Berlin saw an invitation to continue business as usual.Beijing saw an exploitable weakness.

Six years later, reality had caught up with rhetoric. As the Brookings analysis dated December 2025 emphasizes, the term "systemic rivalry" seemed both outdated and insufficient. Possible cooperation with Beijing had narrowed considerably. Competition had spread to all fields: economic, technological, security, and now military through the Sino-Russian relationship. The question was no longer whether China represented a systemic challenge. It was, undeniably. The question was whether Europe was ready to act on a scale matching that challenge.

The 2026 China Shock: More Than a Commercial Shockwave

In June 2026, the Tokyo Institute of Geoeconomics published its report "European Industry and the Second China Shock", authored by Andrew Capistrano and Paul Nadeau. The "first China shock" of the 2000s concerned low-end consumer goods. The "second shock" was of a completely different nature: China had climbed the value chain and was now the dominant competitor in electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, wind equipment, and industrial machinery. These sectors were not ordinary industries. They formed the backbone of Europe's energy transition and the continent's future industrial resilience. China was no longer nibbling at Europe's margins. It was threatening its heart.

The Central Concept: Turning the System Into Power

The Military Swarm as a Strategic Metaphor

The genius of the concept proposed by Andrew Small lies in its military metaphor. In a swarm strategy, a single high-value platform concentrates risks — and becomes an easy target to identify, target, and paralyze. But many smaller, more disposable units disperse the risk. It is infinitely harder for Beijing to brush aside 50 small, simultaneously dispersed measures than one large, threatening one. And because they are numerous, they can be scaled up, scaled down, or abandoned without the whole thing collapsing. The swarm combines certainty and uncertainty by design. The principles are fixed and announced: any company knows the access conditions and knows that violations carry consequences. But the specific measures — which instrument, applied where and when — remain deliberately unpredictable.

This means concretely that Europe must be predictable on its terms and unpredictable on its tactics. The first dimension gives compliant companies the confidence needed to invest and operate. The second keeps Beijing in permanent imbalance. A state actor can optimize against a single, known threat. It cannot easily prepare against many small measures whose sequence and targets it cannot anticipate. This is the asymmetry at the heart of the Small doctrine.

The Six No's: The Conceptual Framework for Market Access

The central proposal of the ECFR rests on what the report calls the "Six No's" — six conditions for access to the European single market. They are not specific to China. They apply to any company wishing to operate in Europe. But for companies that depend on opacity, state subsidies, or political direction, they represent a prohibitive entry cost. For transparent, market-based, and secure suppliers, they constitute only modest operating costs. The first, No double standards: no foreign company should enjoy greater access to the European market than European companies enjoy in its own country. The second, No distorted competition: companies operating in Europe must do so under market conditions, not through state subsidies or by bypassing the standards that European producers must respect.

The Six No's in Detail: An Architecture of Reciprocity

No Monopolies, No Backdoors

The third of the Six No's targets monopolies: no single foreign supplier should be able to cut off or "weaponize" a strategic supply chain. This is a direct response to European dependence on Chinese rare earths, permanent magnets, and solar components. In October 2025, China had reduced its rare earth exports, putting the European automotive industry directly at risk. This measure was no accident. It was a show of force, a test of European resilience. Europe had stumbled. The fourth No, no backdoors, concerns verifiable security standards: products connected to European networks or capable of receiving remote updates must meet verifiable security requirements. This explicitly targets network inverters, transformers, Huawei and ZTE equipment, port concessions linked to COSCO, and connected vehicles.

The fifth No prohibits black boxes: companies operating in strategic sectors must disclose their ownership, financing, and state affiliations. The opacity of Chinese corporate governance — where the lines between private entities and state direction are deliberately blurred — makes this condition particularly demanding for Chinese companies. The sixth No, finally, targets threat enablers: access to the European market, supply chains, or financial systems must not extend to companies supporting military or hostile coercive activities against Europe. This is a direct reference to the increasing Sino-Russian military-industrial cooperation on drones and electronic warfare since mid-2025.

Six Conditions, One Goal: Modifying Market Logic

The target of this architecture is not China's behavior as such. It is the market logic that makes this behavior profitable. As long as it is more profitable for a company to depend on state subsidies, opacity, and political direction rather than playing by the rules of the open market, no diplomatic pressure will change anything. The Six No's aim to modify this calculation at its root: by ensuring that transparency, diversification, and competitive neutrality become the rational choices for companies wishing to access the world's largest market. This is pure geostrategic pragmatism. Non-ideological. Non-punitive. Simply functional.

The Swarm in Practice: Instruments Already Available

Using What Exists Now, Without Waiting for New Laws

One of the strengths of the swarm concept lies in its immediate pragmatism. Andrew Small recognizes that the most powerful instruments Europe is currently developing — the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) of 2026, revisions to the Cyber Security Act, the full deployment of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation — will still require years before being fully operational. But the swarm can begin right now, with existing tools. Safeguard measures on surging imports. Subsidy investigations conducted across multiple sectors simultaneously. Public procurement instruments deployed in parallel. Systematic product security audits. Recalibrated national subsidy criteria. None of these measures is decisive in isolation. But deployed together, under a common rationale, they arrive from too many directions for Beijing to counter them effectively.

The Rhodium Group, cited in the report, estimates that Europe loses 500 manufacturing jobs per day for lack of adequate defenses against Chinese competition. The French Planning Agency had calculated that a quarter of French exports and a third of German exports are directly threatened by Chinese competitors. Two-thirds of German domestic production is exposed. The Rhodium Group warns that half of German manufacturing jobs are now at risk. Faced with these figures, every month without a systemic response is a month of silent industrial surrender.

The Industrial Accelerator Act: A Decisive Test of European Resolve

Presented by the European Commission on March 4, 2026, the IAA constitutes Europe's most ambitious attempt to transform the public demand of the single market into an instrument of economic security. It aims to ensure that public money supports European industrial capacity — particularly in strategic and green sectors: steel, wind, heat pumps, automotive, batteries. China reacted immediately. On June 11, 2026, Beijing had canceled two planned ministerial meetings with the EU, without providing an official explanation. The signal was crystal clear: the economic relationship between Brussels and Beijing was entering an openly confrontational phase.

China as Structural Support for Russian Aggression

Beijing, "Decisive Enabler" of the War Against Ukraine

The ECFR report does not limit itself to the economic dimension. It explicitly highlights the reality that too many European analysts have long refused to name clearly: China is the primary enabler of Putin's war against Ukraine. Since mid-2025, the Sino-Russian relationship has expanded into military-industrial cooperation on capabilities likely to play a role in a future conflict with Europe — notably drones and electronic warfare. This is no longer just economic aid allowing Russia to bypass sanctions. It is operational cooperation that strengthens Putin's war machine while he massacres Ukrainian civilians.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeated it many times: one cannot talk about lasting peace as long as China continues to fuel the Russian war effort. The ECFR, in a separate publication on the Sino-Russian nexus, had reached the same conclusion in strategic terms: Beijing's constant aid encourages Russia to persist in its aggression. This support must be understood not as an accident of Chinese foreign policy, but as a deliberate choice, consistent with Xi Jinping's strategy which places rivalry with the United States at the center of everything else. Ukraine is not a distant conflict for China — it is a geopolitical laboratory to test the West's endurance.

European Rearmament Depends on Chinese Supply Chains

The height of European vulnerability lies in this dizzying contradiction: Europe's rearmament depends on Chinese products. The permanent magnets needed for weapons systems. The critical minerals indispensable for defense equipment. China holds monopoly or near-monopoly positions in critical mineral processing, permanent magnets, solar, batteries, drones, and key pharmaceutical inputs. How can Europe seriously consider responding to the Russian threat — a threat structurally supported by Beijing — if its own military capabilities depend on Chinese supply chains? This is a first-order strategic vulnerability that the sixth of the Six No's specifically seeks to address.

The German Obstacle: The Pivot That Blocks Everything

Berlin Caught Between Two Fires

The German question runs through the entire debate on European strategy toward China. Andrew Small identifies it himself: "Germany remains the pivot". And this is where the issue becomes decisively complicated. Volkswagen, Bosch, BASF — the pillars of German industry have largely relocated to China. They have immense interests in preserving access to the Chinese market. But the equipment manufacturers see Chinese imports, which threaten their industrial base in Germany, very unfavorably. The VDMA, the association of German machine manufacturers, now openly argues that China is not playing fair and that policymakers must respond — with tariffs, local content rules, and the application of European standards to Chinese imports. This shift is historic.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after his visit to Beijing on February 25 and 26, 2026, publicly acknowledged that Germany was "simply no longer competitive enough". As Le Monde emphasizes in its June 2026 investigation, German industry is losing 10,000 jobs per month. This hemorrhage is changing Berlin's political calculus. The question is no longer theoretical. It is electoral. And as Jean-Claude Juncker said with disarming honesty: "We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected after we've done it." This motto sums up the European political impasse for years.

France, Spain, Hungary: The Other Variables in the Game

The ECFR report notes that the old European fault lines on China — the axis of hawks versus doves, Central Europe versus Western Europe, South versus North — have blurred. France is pushing for a strategic confrontation with Beijing. Jean-Noël Barrot, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, had described China as a power engaged no longer in trade but in "industrial colonization". Spain, despite Pedro Sánchez's four visits to Beijing in four years, has not worked against the general direction of European policy. Even Hungary, long a shield for Beijing within the EU, is reportedly less obstructionist after its recent electoral turbulence. What remains, fundamentally, is German ambiguity — and as long as Paris and Berlin do not converge, Europe can only move at a crawl.

The Coalition of Partners: Europe's Discreet Allies

Japan, Korea, India: Building a Network of Reciprocity

An often-overlooked dimension of the framework proposed by the ECFR is its coalitionist dimension. The Six No's are not just a defense architecture. They also constitute an offer to Europe's partners: companies and countries that respect these conditions benefit from faster access, preference in public procurement, and eligibility for support. Japan, Korea, and India are explicitly mentioned in the report as potential partners in such a coalition. In May 2026, the EU and Japan met in Brussels to strengthen their ties and reduce their dependence on China, which dominates key minerals, batteries, and clean technologies. They agreed to work together on diversifying supply chains.

This rapprochement is strategically significant. It is not about forming an anti-Chinese bloc in the classic geopolitical sense. It is about creating alternative supply ecosystems that progressively reduce structural dependencies. And in doing so, changing Beijing's coercion equation: if Europe can source its batteries in Japan, its components in Korea, its rare earths in Australia and Canada, the threat of a Chinese embargo loses much of its deterrent power. The ECFR report also cites the EU-US agreement on critical raw materials as an element of this resilience architecture.

The Trump Problem: The Indispensable and Unpredictable Ally

It's impossible to ignore the American variable. The second Trump administration has certainly imposed tariffs that reduced the US bilateral trade deficit with China — but without eliminating China's global surplus. According to the Institute of Geoeconomics, Trump's tariffs simply redirected export flows toward Europe, worsening the European problem. The EU feared that a US-China trade truce would shift even more pressure toward the European market. This is precisely what happened. Nevertheless, Trump remains an essential actor: his relative firmness toward Beijing creates a context in which transatlantic allies can coordinate their technological restriction policies and supply chain diversification — even if the American administration's style makes this coordination erratic and difficult to institutionalize.

The Costs of Resilience: A Necessary Truth-Telling

Europe Is Already Paying for Its Dependencies — Without Knowing It

One of the most powerful arguments in the Small report is this: the cost of resilience is not a new cost. It is a cost Europe is already paying, invisibly. Companies have pocketed the profits of supply concentration — low prices, short lead times, supply chain efficiency — while the public silently absorbed the risks. Industrial offshoring. Dependence on Chinese magnets and rare earths for military equipment. Exposure to supply cuts during geopolitical crises. What we call the "cost of resilience" is actually a risk that the market had failed to value correctly. The time for repayment has arrived.

The European Commission stated on May 29, 2026, that "the current state of the trade and investment relationship with China is not sustainable." This is a remarkable admission from an institution that had long preferred neutral phrasing. Euronews reported that commissioners acknowledged needing a de-risking strategy — not decoupling, but a gradual reduction of the most dangerous dependencies. Chemicals, metals, clean energy: concrete proposals are expected after the June summit. The window of opportunity is narrow. China is changing its model, investing massively abroad, consolidating its positions in third countries. Every year of delay is a year of progress for Beijing.

The Political Inflations of Truth-Telling

Resisting Beijing's pressure and articulating the necessary trade-offs depends on the political will of European leaders. Ursula von der Leyen formulated it with unusual clarity on March 24, 2026: "The threats to our supply chain security and the shock to our industrial base require urgent responses. Responses that we can only devise together." But wanting to do it together and succeeding in doing it together are two different things. European consumers are sensitive to inflation — and Chinese imports help keep it under control. The German automotive industry fears retaliation. Northern countries fear a trade war. The truth-telling about the costs of industrial resilience will be the ultimate test of Europe's geopolitical maturity.

The Test of Summer 2026: The European Council Facing History

What the June Summit Was Set to Decide

On June 18 and 19, 2026, in Brussels, the European Council had a specific question on its table that Decode39 perfectly summarized ahead of the summit: the issue was no longer whether China posed a systemic challenge — leaders now largely accepted that — but whether Europe was ready to act with the required scale and speed. Andrew Small himself stated ahead of the discussions: "The question is whether leaders give the European Commission the political support needed to move from incremental measures to a more systemic strategy." The European Parliament held a joint debate on June 18 on the European Council and EU-China economic relations, emphasizing that MEPs expected concrete commitments — no longer declarations of principle.

EU News reported that heads of state and government had attempted to lay the foundations for a European strategy that places the Union in a more balanced economic and trade position — without provoking an open rupture with Beijing, and without reproducing Trump-style punitive tariffs. The formula remains fragile. A firm response without causing a crack. Countermeasures, but not a trade war. This is precisely the swarm doctrine applied to politics: accumulating without provoking, progressing without exposing, building without declaring.

A Narrow but Real Window of Opportunity

The ECFR report identifies a reality that the Institute of Geoeconomics confirms on its side: China is not ready for a major trade conflict. Its domestic economy cannot absorb the industrial capacity it has built. If its exports slow down, factories idle, debt pressure worsens, employment weakens. Continued access to the European market remains essential for Beijing — at least until China achieves greater technological self-sufficiency. This window exists. It will not last indefinitely. The darkest projections anticipate that China could reach 45% of world production in 2030, up from 30% today. At that level, European leverage will have significantly diminished.

Inverted Rhetoric: What Europe Can Learn from Beijing

Say Less, Do More

One of the most striking observations of the Small report concerns the institutional rhetoric of the UE. Faced with the accumulation of legislative measures implicitly targeting China — the IAA, the revision of the Cybersecurity Act, rules on foreign public procurement — European officials had adopted a deliberate posture that the report summarizes as: "say less, do more." This intentional discretion had a logic. Framing each measure explicitly as anti-Chinese gave Beijing an easy focal point for criticism, the mobilization of its allies within member states, and demands for retaliation. By avoiding fanfare, Europe hoped to progress without provoking.

This is precisely the swarm philosophy applied to communication. And it is, paradoxically, a lesson learned from Chinese practice itself. Beijing had perfected the art of advancing its pieces smoothly, without thunderous declarations, using legal and commercial mechanisms to achieve strategic goals. **Europe must turn this method back** on its initiator. The author of the report even cites this reversal with a well-placed irony: "reverse Deng" — a deliberate imitation of Deng Xiaoping's philosophy of "hide your strength, bide your time."

Chinese Pressure on Information and Influence

The ECFR report goes further than the commercial dimension alone. It mentions that Chinese foreign manipulations and interference are increasing in Europe. Five techniques appear in Beijing's instruction manual: communicating messages about China's place in the world and spreading support for Russian positions. In March 2026, the UE had imposed sanctions against two Chinese entities — Integrity Technology Group and Anxun Information Technology — for cyberattacks against several EU member states, notably against critical infrastructure. This is not an isolated incident. It is the digital side of the backdoor strategy that the fourth of the Six No's specifically seeks to condemn.

The Stable Equilibrium Point: Neither Containment nor Capitulation

The Final Goal: A Restructured Relationship, Not a Rupture

It would be tempting to interpret the swarm strategy as a path toward decoupling or total confrontation. That is precisely what it is not. Andrew Small is explicit on this point: the final goal should be a stable settlement rather than a permanent struggle. The proposed measures do not corner Beijing into an impasse. There is no inherent reason why a negotiated balance on different bases would be impossible. What Europe seeks is to modify the market structure so that the terms of a future agreement are determined by Europe, not by Beijing. Currently, it's the opposite. China dictates the conditions by playing on European dependencies. The swarm aims to rebalance this power relationship before sitting down at the negotiating table.

The report clearly distinguishes tactics from strategy. Tactically, the swarm is offensive: it's about striking fast, often, from multiple angles. Strategically, the objective is defensive and constructive: defending the European single market, reducing critical dependencies, and creating the political space for negotiation on bases of real reciprocity. Europe, as Small puts it, "should focus on preventing coercion while it changes the terms of the relationship." This is not a doctrine of trade war. It is a doctrine of strategic repositioning.

Bilateral Engagements: Buying Time or Real Diplomacy

Bilateral engagements — conversations between Macron and Zhang Guoqing, visits by European chancelleries to Beijing — are integrated into the doctrine, but with a specific function. Europeans should understand bilateral engagements primarily as a means to buy the political space necessary for the adjustments that Europe must make: reducing the dependencies that expose it to coercion, putting trade back on a basis compatible with a prosperous industrial base. They must not be confused with a strategy in themselves. Macron had returned from Beijing in December 2025 frustrated. Elvire Fabry, from the Jacques Delors Institute, summarized it dryly: "we don't see a China in negotiation mode." Diplomacy remains useful. But only if it accompanies a posture of firmness, and not if it replaces it.

The Truth About Russia in the Chinese Equation

China, Structural Enabler of Europe's Existential Threat

Russia's war against Ukraine — an illegal, barbaric aggression, documented as such by all credible international institutions — cannot be analyzed without its Sino-Russian dimension. Putin is holding on, beyond any reasoned expectation, because Beijing provides him with the economic, technological, and industrial resources that allow him to keep his war machine operational despite sanctions. The ECFR, in its separate analysis of the Sino-Russian nexus, calculated that this asymmetry — China using Russia for its own geostrategic goals vis-à-vis the United States, while maintaining Russian pressure on Europe — was at the heart of Xi Jinping's strategy. For Xi, Poutine is a useful asset, not an equal partner.

The sixth of the Six No's — no access to the European market for companies supporting hostile military or coercive activities against Europe — is a direct response to this reality. If Chinese companies provide components for the drones that strike Kyiv, if entities linked to the Chinese state participate in the Russian war effort, they must pay the commercial cost in Europe. It's simple. It's coherent. And it explicitly links European trade policy toward China to the defense of Ukraine and the democratic values that the Union claims to embody. Zelenskyy resists with the strength he has left. Europe can resist with the strength of the world's largest market.

Defense of Ukraine and European Strategic Autonomy: One and the Same Struggle

There is no clear separation between supporting Ukraine and asserting European strategic autonomy in the face of China. They are two sides of the same coin. If Europe does not reduce its dependence on Chinese supply chains for its defense equipment, it will be structurally vulnerable in the event of an escalation of the conflict with Russia — a conflict that Beijing implicitly encourages. If Europe does not implement the Six No's to rebalance its trade relationship with China, it will continue to indirectly finance, via its abundant trade surpluses, the machine that supports Putin. Strategic coherence requires that these two files be treated as one.

Conclusion: The Swarm or Decline

The Moment for a Civilizational Choice

The publication of "The Art of the Swarm" by the ECFR on June 17, 2026, is not just another report on China. It is a document of rupture. It signifies that the era of European acquiescence is officially over in the intellectual circles that have the ear of decision-makers in Brussels. It translates into operational terms a diagnosis that analysts have been formulating for years: Europe can no longer afford to respond to a systemic strategy with fragmentary measures. Andrew Small has provided the conceptual framework — the Six No's, the swarm doctrine, the coalition of partners, the distinction between fixed terms and flexible tactics. What is missing now is the political will to apply it. And this will can only come from a substantial Franco-German agreement, a Commission endowed with the political mandate to act, and member states ready to absorb the short-term costs of long-term resilience.

What History Will Remember of June 2026

In ten years, historians will look at the period 2025-2026 as the moment when Europe either decided to become a sovereign geostrategic actor or definitively accepted its status as a playground for the great powers — as Taylor & Francis analysts put it, "player and playground". The June 2026 European Council, with its discussions on China, the IAA, and de-risking tools, constitutes a first test. Not the last. What is being built now — these swarms of seemingly disparate measures, these discrete coalitions with Tokyo and Seoul, this gradual normalization of the concept of reciprocity — is the foundation of a Europe capable of saying no. No to double standards. No to distorted competition. No to coercive monopolies. No to backdoors. No to black boxes. No to threat enablers. Six simple no's. But which can, if Europe has the courage to apply them, change the balance of the world.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Sources

Primary Sources

Andrew Small, ECFR — « The art of the swarm : systemic rivalry with China on European terms » — June 17, 2026

Andrew Capistrano & Paul Nadeau, Institute of Geoeconomics — « European Industry and the Second China Shock » (IOG Economic Intelligence Report Vol. 5 No. 11) — June 19, 2026

Virginie Malingre, Le Monde — « Why Europe is unable to defend its industry against the second Chinese shock » — June 9, 2026

Secondary Sources

Decode39 — « Europe's China debate reaches a new test at this week's summit » — June 19, 2026

EU News — « Competitiveness : EU leaders explore new anti-China tools (with no conclusions, and without mentioning Beijing) » — June 20, 2026

Euronews — « Can the EU de-risk from China and make its trade sustainable ? » — June 2, 2026

European Parliament — « June European Council and EU-China economic relations » — June 11, 2026

ECFR — « Great changes unseen : the China-Russia nexus and European security » — September 2025