China Shock 2.0: This Time It's Europe, with Adam Tooze

Last week in Brussels, EU leaders sat down to a dinner whose agenda couldn't bring itself to print the word "China" — even though everyone at the table knew that was the only thing on the menu. The numbers behind their unease are real: a goods deficit with China nearing 360 billion euros, and, for the first time ever, all twenty-seven member states in the red.

This week, Adam Tooze returns to Sinica, recorded at Summer Davos in Dalian, to ask the question almost no one in that room was asking — why the panic, and why now? We get into Polanyi's “double movement” and whether Europe's response is the real thing or "cosplay"; the overcapacity debate as a test of bona fides; what "glut-shaming" and the word weiqu 委屈 reveal about how this lands on a Chinese ear; Friedrich Merz reaching for the Plaza Accord and what Beijing hears when he does; why this China shock, unlike the first, takes aim at Europe's industrial heart; and the rare-earths clock ticking down to October. Candid, contrarian, and free of illusion about either side.