Spain's China Gambit: Pedro Sánchez, Strategic Autonomy, and the European Turn to Beijing — with Mario Esteban Rodríguez

“I think we can characterize this strategy mainly by two things. One is pragmatism. He's been very, very pragmatic in his approach to China. He avoids this kind of idealistic or wishful thinking narratives about China, the global order. He thinks that China is a highly successful and powerful authoritarian system with a model of state capitalism.”

“In Spain, frankly speaking, you know there are many issues that are very heated debate, many issues of the political agenda, even on foreign policy. Sometimes China policy has been a state policy, so it's been quite consistent. I would bet that if or when the popular party leads the central government in Spain, they would follow a similar approach to the one that Sánchez is following.”

“All these debates about the industrialization in Europe, they are here now and they were not here eight years ago. So these three things, like COVID, Russian-Chinese relationships in the context of war in Ukraine and this macroeconomic imbalance, these three things make Sánchez have, to some extent, a critical view on China or this idea that the security dimension of the relationship is more important to Sánchez than it was to Merkel.”

“Trump seems like the attractive international role, not simply push away a little bit, pushes Spain away from Washington or pushes Spain away from this current US administration, but also increases China's appeal as a stabilizing force for Spanish foreign policy. Because there is more need for this kind of a stabilizing role of China.”

“Bilateral goods trade exceeded 55 billion last year, up nearly 10 percent, and yet the trade deficit keeps widening. China now accounts for a staggering 74 percent of Spain's total trade gap. So what is Sánchez actually up to? Is this a sophisticated bid for strategic autonomy, a bid for a Spanish brand of leverage between Washington and Beijing?”

“This Chery investment in Barcelona... is good because you have the infrastructure there, you have the knowledge there, people there, and now you have again another foreign car company that is willing to invest there and put this back to motion, back to track. This is very welcome, but again, the devil is in the details because the actual economic impact for the Spanish society is very different, whether you localize or not, for example, your value change.”

“Spain has some comparative advantages when it comes for promoting cooperation with Latin America, because the Spanish diplomatic service, Spanish companies, Spanish academia, we all have very intense networks there. We have a lot of knowledge of what's going on on the ground there. Before COVID, Chinese companies had bought three times more assets from Spanish companies in Latin America than in Spain.”

“Donald Trump is creating such sense of discomfort, such sense of disruption among the US traditional allies that these countries are forced, to some extent, these authorities are forced to look also to other alternatives. I think it's wider. We have the example of Canadian prime minister. It's not only in Europe.”