Both Washington and Beijing have made the same mistake. They looked at Europe and decided it was a supporting actor — a market to be managed, an ally to be aligned, a collection of bilateral relationships to be cultivated. They were wrong. And the evidence of the past five years has already proved it.

In this urgent, forensically argued book, intelligence practitioner and diplomat Brian Iselin dismantles the shared miscalculation at the heart of great-power competition. Drawing on two decades at the intersection of European policy, intelligence analysis, and Asian diplomacy, Iselin shows that Europe holds more cards than either Washington or Beijing has built its strategy around — and that what Europe does with those cards will determine more of the next thirty years than either power currently prices.

How Europe Will Decide the China Century moves through the evidence with precision: the regulatory architecture that makes Brussels a de facto global standard-setter; the market leverage that China cannot replace; the specific sectoral chokepoints — electric vehicles, battery materials, investment screening — where European decisions shape Chinese access to the developed world. It names the fracture lines that could break the relationship, proposes the framework that could stabilise it, and gives practitioners the intelligence tools to navigate it.

The book asks one question and answers it without flinching: if Europe is the decisive variable, why does it keep behaving like a bystander?

For readers of Graham Allison, Anu Bradford, and Adam Tooze. Essential reading for executives, diplomats, policymakers, and strategists operating at the intersection of European and Chinese interests.

How Europe Will Decide the China Century: Europe, China, and the Next World Order

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