Minxin Pei is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a nonresident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
A key pillar of China's strategy of competing with the U.S. is to keep Europe neutral. Even though Europe and China often clash on human rights, they do not see each other as existential security threats. The economic relationship between Brussels and Beijing may be rocky, but few in Europe have been talking about decoupling with China.