Post by Daniel Swedin

Writing in Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden’s national morning daily, Liberal MP Joar Forssell and Christian Democrat MP Magnus Berntsson argue that Europe’s frayed, collapsing relationship with the United States risks pushing the EU into Beijing’s arms - and that Sweden and Europe must therefore be ‘China-proofed’ by sharply cutting dependence on China and tightening rules to block Chinese influence and investment in critical sectors. Their case, however, largely sidesteps a practical constraint: Europe’s green industrial build-out is, for now, scaffolded by Chinese industrial capacity. If you want wind, solar, batteries, heat pumps and transmission kit at the volume and price that makes a rapid transition politically survivable, you are operating inside a global system in which China is a central manufacturer. You can argue for tighter controls in sensitive areas, but pretending the wider relationship has been nothing but a liability is ahistorical, and it leads straight to unserious policy. So when Forssell and Berntsson demand a “sharp reduction” in dependence, there are only two possibilities. Either they are proposing to slow the transition (and they dare not say so), or they are proposing an industrial mobilisation on a scale that their own political tradition has spent decades deriding as “state interference”. That is the hypocrisy at the heart of their argument. They speak the language of sovereignty while refusing the instruments of sovereignty. They want autonomy without investment. They want resilience without factories. And they want security without the awkward business of building anything. It is geopolitics for people who don’t do budgets. “China-proofing” without “Europe-building” means higher costs, slower roll-out, and a transition that collapses the moment voters feel the bill. And when that backlash hits, it won’t be Forssell and Berntsson who pay. It will be households facing higher energy costs and workers watching promised green jobs evaporate into another round of deindustrialisation. If you want to cut dependence, show your workings. Where is your plan for cheap, abundant electricity - generation and grids - at the pace industry needs? Where is your plan for permitting and land use? Where is your plan for skills: apprenticeships, engineers, technicians; the entire workforce pipeline? Where is your plan for public procurement that guarantees volumes so factories are financeable? Where is your plan for state-backed risk-sharing - loans, guarantees, patient capital - without which strategic capacity simply won’t materialise? If they cannot answer those questions, then “China-proofing” is just a slogan for people allergic to the only thing that works: industrial policy.